CHARLESTON – A Kanawha County judge has approved a $4.4 million settlement with the State of West Virginia for five adopted children who were abused by their former parents in Sissonville.
The claims that were settled centered around DoHS and their failure to intervene on behalf of the children despite numerous reports of abuse.
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Kanawha Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers approved the settlement September 29.
“My firm and Salango Law have vowed to uncover every stone in every state to get compensation for these children that were robbed of their innocence and youth by the monsters that were their former parents and anyone or any agency that had a hand in it,” attorney L. Dante diTrapano told The West Virginia Record. “We have entered into an agreement with local counsel in Washington State to sue the equivalent of their Department of Health and Human Services for even allowing the children to be transferred to West Virginia after receiving similar reports about abuse when the family lived across the country near Tacoma, Washington.”
Last year, the five children filed civil lawsuits against Donald Lantz and Jeanna Whitefeather. The couple was earlier in 2025 of locking three adopted children inside a closed-off area of a barn on their Sissonville property. Whitefeather was found guilty of 19 counts, including forced labor, civil rights violations, abuse and gross neglect. Lantz was found guilty of 16 counts, including human trafficking, neglect and forced labor. He was found not guilty of four counts of civil rights violations.
In March 2025, Whitefeather was sentenced to the maximum 215 years in prison, and Lantz was sentenced to the maximum 160 years in prison.
The couple, who are white, were accused of mistreating their adopted Black children by locking them in a shed, forcing them to sleep on the floor and use buckets as toilets and more. The couple was arrested in October 2023 after neighbors saw Lantz lock the oldest girl and her brother in the shed before leaving the property. A Kanawha County Sheriff’s deputy had to use a crowbar to get them out.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Akers allowed two of the adoptive parents to describe the summer vacation the children enjoyed and how it was the first time they were allowed to be kids, to be happy and to enjoy life.
“As a lawyer representing these children, there is no better feeling or day in court,” diTrapano said.
Attorney Ben Salango, who also represented the children, agreed.
“It has been an honor to represent these children,” Salango told The Record. “No settlement can undo what they endured, but this outcome recognizes the harm done to them and the system's failure to protect them.
“Their strength and perseverance have inspired all of us.”
In the criminal complaint against the defendants, deputies said a 9-year-old girl was found alone crying in a loft with no protection from falling, and another child was with Lantz when he eventually returned. Deputies later were led to the couple’s youngest daughter. Deputies said the children were found in dirty clothes and smelling of body odor, deputies said, and the eldest boy was found barefoot with what appeared to be sores on his feet.
During the criminal trial, Kanawha County prosecutors also showed racist text messages they said were from Whitefeather, who denied writing them. The oldest daughter testified the children were cursed at “all the time” and that Whitefeather used racist language.
“You brought these kids to West Virginia, a place I know as almost heaven, and put them in hell,” Akers said during the sentencing hearing last year. “The court will now put you in yours. May God have mercy on your souls, because this court will not.”
