Wichita ? A 57-year-old Vietnam veteran who lived in a group home operated by Arlan and Linda Kaufman testified Tuesday he felt “out of place” during group sessions he attended at another of the couple’s group homes.

The Newton couple is accused of mistreating mentally ill residents, including forcing them to work and attend therapy sessions in the nude.

“They didn’t have any clothes on, and I did,” said the resident, identified in court only by his first name, Dean.

He testified he stopped attending the “current events” group sessions after a year because he felt uncomfortable and his work hours changed.

Dean’s testimony came on the first day of the defense’s case. Arlan Kaufman, 69, and Linda Kaufman, 62, are being tried on more than 30 federal charges – including health care fraud, forced labor and holding clients in involuntary servitude – related to the treatment of residents at the Kaufman House Residential Treatment Center.

Federal prosecutors accuse the couple of forcing residents to masturbate, fondle each other and shave each other’s genitals in purported therapy sessions. The defense contends the goal of the therapy sessions was to remove some of the shock value that some of the residents had been trying to achieve by exposing themselves in public.

Dean testified that Linda Kaufman tried to convince him during one session to take his clothes off, but he did not do it.

He lived at one of the Kaufmans’ two group homes for 18 years, until he moved out in 2000. During that time, Dean said he handled his own money, held a job, owned his own vehicle and visited his family every other Friday.

He said he never went to the Kaufman farm where prosecutors allege other residents were forced to work in the nude.

Lloyd Montgomery, a psychiatrist with the Mental Health Center in Garden City who treated several of the Kaufman House residents years ago, testified that he could not remember any of the residents telling him they were abused by the Kaufmans.

But on cross-examination, Montgomery reviewed treatment notes shown to him by prosecutors and acknowledged there had been an escalation of violence and that one patient indicated he was afraid of Arlan Kaufman.

Montgomery also said he was never told about the so-called nude therapy sessions videotaped by the Kaufmans. Jurors watched some of those videos earlier in the trial.

“I would have remembered it and I would have reported it,” Montgomery said.

Even the defense’s own paid expert witness changed his mind on the stand after prosecutors presented him with additional documents and evidence regarding the purported treatment of residents at the farm.

David George Hough, a clinical psychologist in Topeka, initially testified that psychologists could not determine whether residents had consented to the therapy without first evaluating those residents.

Hough said at one point while reviewing the videotaped nude group sessions, he turned off the video and just listened to words: “What it sounded like was group therapy.”

But prosecutors showed Hough documents by other mental health experts who had examined the residents during that time, along with letters written by Arlan Kaufman, showing the extent of their mental health problems.

Hough acknowledged he no longer thought the mentally ill patients could have consented.