Mother on trial in West Virginia denies locking adopted teens in shed

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A woman accused with her husband of forcing their adopted children to perform hard farm labor denied confining two of the children to a shed despite police finding them in the structure behind a locked door, news outlets reported.

Jeanne Kay Whitefeather took the stand Tuesday as the second week began in the trial of her and her husband, Donald Ray Lantz. They are accused of mistreating four of the five children, all of whom are Black. Whitefeather and Lantz, who are white, each face more than a dozen felony counts that include forced labor, civil rights violations, human trafficking and gross child neglect.

Whitefeather and Lantz were arrested in October 2023 when neighbors called police to report seeing Lantz lock the oldest girl and her teenage brother in the shed and leave the property in Sissonville.

Whitefeather called the shed a “teenager hangout.”

“They weren’t locked in,” Whitefeather testified. “They had a key. They could come and go as they pleased.”

But the oldest daughter, now 18, testified last week that she didn’t know about access to a key, which a detective had testified earlier was found out of sight on top of a cabinet in the shed.

The daughter also said the children were given a steady diet of peanut butter sandwiches at scheduled times and were not allowed to eat at other times, even if they were hungry. But Whitefeather said the children were allowed to use the refrigerator and said she cooked food every night.

After the couple's arrest, all five children were placed under the care of Child Protective Services. The couple adopted the five siblings while living in Minnesota. They moved to a farm in Washington state in 2018 before moving again to West Virginia in 2023, when the children ranged in age from 5 to 16. The oldest boy is receiving full-time care in a psychiatric facility.