Five Black Children Treated Like ‘Slaves’ by Adoptive Parents Win $4.4 Million Settlement After CPS Failed to Protect Them Despite Repeated Warnings

Five Black children who endured years of horrific abuse at the hands of their White adoptive parents will receive a $4.4 million settlement from the state of West Virginia after Child Protective Services allegedly failed to properly respond to repeated warnings about their welfare.

Kanawha County Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers approved the $4.4 million settlement on Tuesday, September 29, resolving claims stemming from the state child-welfare system’s handling of reports involving Jeanne Kay Whitefeather and Donald Ray Lantz.

The children were subjected to forced labor, confinement, deprivation, and racist abuse while living under the couple’s control.

According to the Daily Mail, the five children will now share the multimillion-dollar payout following the nightmare they endured.

According to the news outlet:

It comes more than one year after Whitefeather and Lantz were sentenced to serve decades behind bars for their treatment of the children.

Whitefeather is now serving 215 years in prison, with at least 40 years behind bars before she is eligible for parole.

Lantz, meanwhile, was sentenced to 160 years in prison but must spend at least 30 behind bars before parole eligibility. They were both also ordered to pay $280,000 in restitution to their five children.

The children were found by authorities in October 2023 locked in a shed at the couple’s Sissonville home with no lights, food or running water, and a camera recording them.

Whitefeather had claimed that the children were not being held against their will and that the shed was used as a ‘teenage clubhouse’ but detectives found that the kids were locked in from the outside.

After authorities found the three older children locked in the shed, they discovered a nine-year-old girl locked inside the main house.

The children had poor body odor and were found wearing dirty clothes with sores on their feet.

West Virginia Watch reported that neighbors repeatedly contacted CPS with concerns about the children, yet authorities did not rescue them until law enforcement became involved in October 2023.

Attorney Dante’ diTrapano, who represented the children, said there were numerous calls from concerned neighbors but apparently only one CPS visit.

West Virginia Watch previously found that the state Department of Human Services could not produce documentation showing CPS had actually made contact with the children while a referral describing “slave-like” conditions was active.

Evidence presented during the criminal trial later showed that a CPS worker had apparently left a card at the family’s residence.

Even more disturbing, according to diTrapano, when CPS eventually interviewed the children, the questioning was conducted within earshot of Whitefeather and Lantz, the very people accused of terrorizing them.

The settlement represents the maximum recovery available to the children under applicable state liability limits and will be divided among the five victims to help with their continuing recovery and care.

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