Wichita ? Involuntary servitude, forced nude labor, civil rights violations, health care fraud, physical and sexual abuse of mentally ill residents – those are some of the charges federal prosecutors will try to prove to a jury when a Newton couple get their day in court this week.

Arlan Kaufman, 68, and Linda Kaufman, 62, face 34 federal counts related to the treatment of mentally ill residents at the Kaufman House Residential Treatment Center in Newton.

The couple have pleaded not guilty to all counts. Their attorneys have contended in earlier court proceedings that videotaped nude therapy sessions were legitimate treatment and that the mentally ill adults in their care, some of whom even held outside jobs, were free to leave the facility.

Their trial is set to begin Tuesday in federal court in Wichita.

“We are looking forward to going to trial and completing the factual history – rather than rumors and speculation and innuendo. We had a lot of that so far,” said Thomas Haney, the attorney representing Arlan Kaufman.

Some of the allegations date back to the 1980s, and some residents lived in their facility for more than 20 years, he said.

“A lot of things make good reading but don’t do anything as far as a fair representation of what happened,” Haney said.

That was a sentiment shared by attorney Stephen Joseph, who represents Linda Kaufman in the case. He urged people to wait until all the evidence is in before making up their minds.

“There is a big difference between nude therapy and therapy in the nude,” Joseph said.

When asked to explain the difference, he replied: “If you are at a nudist camp providing therapy, it is not nude therapy; it is therapy in the nude. It is as simple as that.”

Prosecutors have declined to discuss the case, but court filings and other documents that surfaced in earlier licensing hearings by state regulatory agencies allege a surreal picture of life for residents of the Kaufman House.

“The things depicted on those videotapes are not only bizarre, but they are shocking and mind-blowing,” said Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas. His agency, formerly the Kansas Advocacy and Protective Services, got residents out of the home and pressured for prosecution of a case that had languished for years in the bureaucracy.

The indictment accuses the Kaufmans of forcing residents to perform sexually explicit acts and then videotaping some of the residents’ sexual contacts during purported therapy sessions. It also alleges the residents were forced to masturbate, fondle each other and shave each other’s genitals. It also accuses Arlan Kaufman of fondling residents.

One videotape cited in court filings, for example, reportedly showed Arlan Kaufman urging a male resident to put an object in his urethra.

Publicity over the case prompted the state Legislature this past session to tighten regulations governing smaller facilities like the Kaufman House that treat mentally ill adults and created a new state crime of “trafficking” in forced labor or involuntary servitude.

As early as 2001, state officials seized videotapes of nude sessions at the center. The sexually explicit videotapes prompted officials to suspend Arlan Kaufman’s social care license in 2001 and Linda Kaufman’s nursing license last year.

Prosecutors have said the couple’s unlicensed group home continued to operate after the Kaufmans lost their professional licenses.

The Kaufmans were first charged under a law that makes it illegal to hold or sell another person into “any condition of involuntary servitude,” which is prohibited by the 13th Amendment banning slavery. Subsequent indictments also alleged the couple physically, psychologically and sexually abused group home residents, kept two people in involuntary servitude for 14 years and defrauded the federal Medicare program.

The indictment also seeks the return of $283,000 that authorities allege the Kaufmans received from their activities, including nearly $217,000 in Medicare payments.

In 1998, Arlan Kaufman was the highest biller in the state of Kansas for psychotherapy, court filings show. At the time, he had just nine patients compared with 52 for the next highest billing service provider.

“This is an important case for several reasons,” Nichols said. “One, it is an important case to obtain justice for people who resided at the Kaufman House who were the alleged victims of sexual abuse and neglect. It is important because it vividly displayed several systemic problems with the policies of our state.”

The state Legislature, however, did not go far enough in making changes to state law governing the guardianship of mentally ill adults so that it would prohibit conflicts of interest like allowing a guardian to also be the service provider, Nichols said. Arlan Kaufman was the guardian of one woman who lived at the treatment center.

As for the changes in state law the case spawned, Haney said they were unnecessary. The state already has laws and regulations on the books that it could use if it thought the conduct was improper, he said.

Joseph derided the Legislature’s actions in the wake of the case: “They tend to always act on allegations. … They don’t tend to wait for the facts.”