A white West Virginia woman, accused of forcing her black adopted children to work as "slaves," took the stand at her trial this week.
Jeanne Kay Whitefeather and her husband Donald Ray Lantz face a dozen felony counts, including civil rights violations, human trafficking, forced labor, and gross child neglect, the Associated Press reported.
The accusations focus on four of the couple's five children. Prosecutors alleged that Whitefeather and Lantz kept some of the children locked in an outdoor shed, however Whitefeather denied the accusation in testimony, referring to the shed as a "teenage hangout."
"They weren't locked in," the AP reported Whitefeather testified. "They had a key. They could come and go as they pleased."
In previous testimony, a teenage girl said she was unaware of a key. A detective testified that a key was in the shed, out of site on top of a cabinet, the AP reported.
In the couple's indictment, prosecutors alleged that the couple targeted the children specifically and forced them to work because of their race, West Virginia MetroNews reported.
"It alleges human trafficking, human rights violations, the use of forced labor," the station quoted Kanawha County Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers during a previous bond hearing. "Human rights violations specific to the fact that these children were targeted because of their race and they were used basically as slaves from what the indictment alleges."
However, Whitefeather's attorney, Mark Plants, previously said during a court appearance that the couple was grappling with "their children's past trauma and severe mental illness," the AP reported. Plants also referenced "physical, sexual and emotional" abuse committed by the children's biological mother before the adoption.
The AP reported that the five siblings now are in the care of Child Protective Services. The children were adopted while living in Minnesota, moved to a farm in Washington in 2018 before moving again to West Virginia in 2023. The children's ages ranged from 5 to 16 at the time. The oldest boy is currently receiving full-time care in a psychiatric facility.
