A wealthy white couple in West Virginia forced their adopted black children to work as slaves and sleep in their barn, according to a shocking allegation.
Donald Ray Lantz, 63, and Jean Kay Whitefeather, 62, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to more than a dozen new charges after several children were found locked in a crumbling shack wearing tattered clothing. Metro News reported..
Lantz and Whitefeather were first arrested in October after a welfare check revealed that the couple’s five adopted children – ages 16, 14, 11, 9 and 6 – were living in poor conditions on their Sissonville property.
The indictment, which Kanawha County Circuit Judge Mary Clare Akers said was one of the worst she has seen, alleges that the adopted children were forced to work on the couple’s farmland because of their race.
“The indictment alleges human trafficking, human rights violations and the use of forced labor,” Akers said in court, “human rights violations that are specific to the fact that, as the indictment alleges, these children were targeted because of their race and essentially used as slaves.”
