A white West Virginia couple is being held on a combined million dollars’ bail as they await trial on human trafficking charges for allegedly using their adopted Black children as “slaves,” in the words of a judge.
Donald Ray Lantz, 63, and Jeanne Kay Whitefeather, 62, had initially each posted $200,000 cash bond in February after being arrested last October. But they were thrown back behind bars last week after that was revoked and a judge raised the bond to $500,000 each.
The investigation was sparked when a neighbor reported that children were locked in a shed on the couple’s property in Sissonville, near Charleston, and forced to perform farm labor, according to WV MetroNews.
Deputies forced their way into the shed, where they found a 14-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl in squalid conditions, with no running water or bathrooms. They also found a 9-year-old girl crying alone in a loft inside the main house.
Police arrested Lantz and Whitefeather and placed the children, a total of five, under the care of Child Protective Services. A grand jury indicted the couple in May.
While Whitefeather’s brother tried to maintain that the shed was a “teenage clubhouse” and the kids liked being there, the criminal complaint indicated the teens had been unable to open it from inside.
Deputy H.K. Burdette said the children were found wearing dirty clothes and smelling of body odor, and that the barefoot boy had sores on his feet. The teens indicated they had been locked inside for about 12 hours.
Lantz and Whitefeather are set for trial Sept. 9 on 16 counts each of alleged civil rights violations, human trafficking, forced labor, gross child neglect and falsifying an application seeking a public defender — all but one of them felonies.
West Virginia authorities did not divulge further details on Wednesday.
“I would just say that because the indictment includes a civil rights violation, that there’s definitely a racial element to the case,” Kanawha County Assistant Prosecutor Madison Tuck told The Associated Press.
With News Wire Services
