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Documented on the original SlaveryMap (2008–2016). We don’t have a verifiable source on file yet. Know one?
What happened
Arlan Kaufman, 69, and his wife Linda Kaufman, 62, for over 24 years have operated the Kaufman house in Newton, Kansas. The house was a home for mentally ill patients. Arlan, a licensed social worker, and Linda, a registered nurse, routinely forced and coerced his patients to engage in nude “therapy” sessions. Arlan documented these sessions capturing himself directing the victims to perform sexually explicit acts in front of other patients. In some of the tapes Arlan can be seen sexually assaulting victims. Victims would constantly be forced to do nude labor, where they would tear down a barn, repair barbed wire fences and unload cement bricks from a pickup. The Kaufmans controlled virtually every aspect of the lives of the residents, determining which rooms they would sleep in, what furniture they would be allowed to have, when they would eat, what recreational activities they could engage in, when they could be downstairs and who could enter and leave the house. A “climate of fear” was present with the patients preventing them from contacting friends and family because afraid of consequence.
Response and intervention
On November 8, 1999, a bus school driver on a route passed by the Kaufman house and saw two nude patients tearing the shingles off a barn. The driver then notified her son who was a sheriff deputy. The deputy then looking into the Arlan’s file and found that they had been filing Medicare for therapy that they were not giving and receiving the funds. The Health Care supervisory then appointed an inversitgator who received a warrant to search the house. After searching the house found the tapes that the Kaufman had been making and arrested them on October 24, 2006. The Kaufmans have since then gone to trial and be convicted. Arlan was found guilty on 31 counts including conspiracy, forced labor, involuntary servitude, health care fraud, money laundering, mail fraud, and obstructing a federal audit and will be facing 30 years in prison. Linda was found guilty of 30 charges and will be serving 7 years in prison All of the victims of the house have been relocated to different facilities throughout the nation. A few are now living with family and one is attending school at the University of Kansas to become a social worker to one day work with the disable and their rights.