#Socialites, come get into this: Five Black kids were adopted by a white couple, then worked, locked up, and treated like property. Now the state that was supposed to protect them has been forced to cut a check.
A judge recently approved a $4.4 million settlement that comes out to a little under $900,000 per child, and the money is meant to cover the harm done by Child Protective Services failures in the case. Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers signed off on the deal with the state’s Department of Human Services. Of course that’s not nearly enough for the pain they suffered living with adults who they thought they could trust.
To note, the payout is also the most the kids could collect under the state’s liability limits…
RELATED: Virginia White Couple Accused Of Having Their Black Adoptive Kids ‘Locked In Barn And Used As Slaves’
As we previously covered, the story all starts with a white couple, Jeanne Kay Whitefeather and Donald Lantz. They adopted the children from a shelter for homeless and vulnerable youths. Investigators said the pair targeted these kids because of their race. The family moved from Minnesota to a farm in Washington state, then on to Sissonville, West Virginia, in 2023. The children were between 5 and 16 at the time.
On top of the physical abuse, financial analyst testify that the couple pocketed about $318,000 in child assistance from Minnesota alone.
Deputies found them after a welfare check, when a neighbor reported seeing Lantz lock a girl and her teenage brother in a shed and drive off. An officer needed a crowbar to get them out. Inside, the kids had buckets for toilets. Some of them were made to live in that shed with no running water and no bathroom.
A 911 caller had also said the kids were being forced to do farm work and weren’t allowed in the house. One of the prosecutors laid out the logic behind it all: the point of treating them this way was to make them “less than human.”
Whitefeather was convicted on all 19 counts, including civil rights violations tied to race. In March 2025, Judge Akers handed down the hammer. Whitefeather got 215 years and Lantz got 160. The judge’s words to them: “May God have mercy on your souls, because this court will not.”
Each was also ordered to pay $280,000 in restitution to the kids. The couple’s lawyers had argued they were just overwhelmed, and one of them blamed the child welfare agency for dropping the ball the most. Funny enough, that’s exactly where the state’s own money problem now comes from.
The system was warned. Neighbors called CPS about the abuse but said they never heard back about their repeated reports. West Virginia Watch reported in 2023 that the Department of Human Services couldn’t produce paperwork showing anyone from CPS ever made contact with the children while a referral about “slave like” conditions was sitting in the system.
The couple’s trial later revealed that CPS only left a card at the door. And when someone did finally talk to the kids? DiTrapano said the interview happened within earshot of the adoptive parents.
How Are The Kids Now?
The kids are in a better place now. They’ve been placed with new adoptive families, and several of them have serious needs because of the trauma. At the settlement hearing, two of their new adoptive parents described a summer vacation the kids got to enjoy, the first time they were allowed to just be kids.