Wichita ? A man accused of enslaving and abusing mentally ill residents of group homes he and his wife operated testified Friday that the residents were “a family of consenting adults.”

Arlan Kaufman, 69, and his wife Linda, 62, are being tried in U.S. District Court on more than 30 federal charges – including health care fraud, Medicare fraud, forced labor and holding clients in involuntary servitude – related to the treatment of residents at the Kaufman House Residential Treatment Center, as the two group homes were known.

Federal prosecutors contend the Kaufmans controlled every aspect of the lives of residents of the Kaufman House, including who could wear clothes or have a cookie after dinner. They are accused of forcing resident to masturbate, fondle each other and shave each other’s genitals.

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.

On Friday, a soft-spoken Arlan Kaufman testified that residents of the group homes were initially referred there by mental health facilities in Newton and Halstead. He stopped accepting the referrals in the mid-1980s.

“We started out with what was considered to be standard treatment,” Kaufman said.

That treatment included training mentally ill patients on social skills, he said. Kaufman testified he believed that type of treatment does not work.

Kaufman also characterized the mentally ill residents of his group homes as a family.

He said today’s family units are nontraditional and must allow for sexual expression. He noted that five residents of the Kaufman House had lived there more than 10 years – “longer than most marriages in our society.”

Kaufman also testified about three residents who, he said, would expose themselves in public. When people act inappropriately, Kaufman testified, “The first thing you’ve got to do is get it out of the public and bring it into the family.”

He insisted that suppressing sexual expression doesn’t work.

“I think you have to find acceptable ways to express that,” he said.

Kaufman said socially acceptable behavior includes companionship, unconditional acceptance, intimacy, trust and sexual expression. He said some people with mental illness are threatened by intimacy.

“You have to help people work through it,” he said, adding that a therapist may have to help mentally ill patients create a bond with another person.

Earlier in the day, Kaufman talked about his background, including his starting the social work program at Bethel College in Newton. He said that when he left eight years later in 1979, it was the most popular program in the school.

“I am a person who likes to develop things, put things together, and I accomplished that,” he said. “… I didn’t want to be a college professor for the rest of my life.”

Kaufman, who has a doctorate in social work from Ohio State University, said he went into private practice after leaving Bethel.

Kaufman also said he had been appointed to a mental health care task force by President Carter and served on a state committee that set licensing requirements for social workers.

Kaufman will continue his testimony on Monday.