Charleston, W.Va. — A woman accused of forcing her adopted children to do hard farm labor with her husband refused to lock the two children in a shed, even though police told them to do one, according to news agencies. It was found in the structure behind the locked door.
Jeanne Kay Whitefeather took the stand Tuesday as the second week began. At trial of her and her husband, Donald Ray Lentz. He is accused of abusing four of the five children, all of whom are black. Whitefeather and Lantz, who are white, each face more than a dozen felony charges, including forced labor, civil rights violations, human trafficking and child neglect.
Whitefeather and Lentz were arrested in October 2023 after neighbors called police to report seeing Lentz leave the property in Sissonville with the oldest girl and her teenage brother locked in a shed.
Whitefeather called the shed a “teenage hangout.”
“They weren’t locked up,” Whitefeather testified. “They had a key. They could come in as they pleased.”
But the eldest daughter, now 18, Testified last week That she didn’t know about access to a key, which a detective previously testified 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 set times and were not allowed to eat at other times, even if they were hungry. But Whitefeather said the children are allowed to use the refrigerator and said she cooks every night.
After the couple’s arrest, all five children were placed in the custody of Child Protective Services. The couple adopted five siblings while living in Minnesota. They moved to a farm in Washington state in 2018 before moving back to West Virginia in 2023, when the children were between the ages of 5 and 16. The oldest boy is receiving full-time care in a psychiatric facility.
