A white West Virginia couple was sentenced to decades in prison this week for abusing some of their adopted children, who are Black, including by forcing them to perform heavy labor like “slaves.”
Donald Lantz, 62, was sentenced to 160 years in prison after being found guilty of forced labor, human trafficking, child abuse and neglect, the New York Times reported.
His wife Jeanne Kay Whitefeather, 63, who was convicted of the same charges plus violating her children’s civil rights, was sentenced to 215 years behind bars.
The couple was convicted in January.
“You brought these children to West Virginia, a place that I know is ‘almost heaven,’ and you put them in hell,” Eighth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Maryclaire Akers said during sentencing, per WCHS. “This court will now put you in yours. And may God have mercy on your souls, because this court will not.”
The couple adopted the five children in 2018 and eventually moved to Kanawha County in May 2023, prosecutors said, per the Times.
They were arrested in October 2023 after a neighbor called Child Protective Services, alleging that two teenagers, 14 and 16, were locked in a shed at the couple’s home in Sissonville, according to court documents obtained by WCHS-TV. Other neighbors also claimed the children were “forced to perform farm labor and were not permitted inside the residence,” per the documents.
Deputies responded to the home and alleged two children were locked in the shed with a portable toilet and no running water, according to an indictment cited by West Virginia MetroNews. The children told authorities they were forced to sleep on the floor and had been locked in the shed for about 12 hours, per the indictment.
The children were wearing dirty clothes and the oldest boy had what appeared to be sores on his feet, per the Associated Press.
A 16-count indictment was filed against the couple.
“It alleges human trafficking, human rights violations, the use of forced labor,” Akers said during a 2024 hearing about the indictment, according to West Virginia Metro News. “Human rights violations specific to the fact that these children were targeted because of their race and they were used basically as slaves from what the indictment alleges.”
The oldest daughter testified during the trial that the children were regularly cursed at and some of them had to stand in their rooms for hours with their hands on their heads, per the AP.
Lantz’s attorney John J. Balenovich tells PEOPLE his client, who was not found guilty of a civil rights violation, “maintains his innocence of all charges”
