On September 17, 2023, I accompanied my dear friend Nancy Jensen to a service at New Creation Fellowship Church in Newton, Kansas. Nancy had not been to New Creation for years, but four decades ago, this small Mennonite church was her world. They were her family, and as her family, they forced her into a situation that ended with her as a victim of multiple federal crimes, in one of the worst cases of organized abuse of disabled people in the history of Kansas.

The Kaufman House, known in local media as the “House of Horrors,” was ostensibly a residential facility where vulnerable adults could live in community with each other while receiving on-site care from qualified professionals. Its owners, Arlan and Linda Kaufman, were upstanding Mennonite churchgoers who used their numerous connections in area churches and the local mental health treatment center to recruit their victims, including Nancy.

So convincing was Arlan Kaufman that after she initially escaped his abuse, he, her Mennonite therapist, and her church community all colluded to make her return to the Kaufman House a mandatory condition of her continued attendance at New Creation. She told her church of Arlan’s abuse, but they did not believe her.

By the time federal agents raided the Kaufman House and arrested Arlan and Linda in 2004, they had been abusing people–sexually, physically, psychologically, medically–for over two decades, despite numerous attempts at whistleblowing from Nancy and other former residents. Arlan was eventually convicted on 31 felony counts, Linda on 30. The charges ranged from Medicaid fraud to conspiracy to involuntary servitude. (The Kaufmans have both since passed away, Arlan in federal prison, and Linda after receiving compassionate release due to illness.)

Newton, Kansas is the town in which I grew up. I attended school with the Kaufman’s children; the Mennonite adults in my home community and church were among the people who enabled and defended Arlan and Linda, even after their convictions. Many claimed that the Kaufman’s brutal sexual torture of their patients was an innovative form of therapy; highly educated Mennonite professionals from churches around the area signed petitions to the judge asking for leniency in sentencing, appealing to the Kaufmans’ status as devout church members as evidence that they were no danger to the public. In the rhetoric of the Kaufmans’ defenders, the humanity of the vulnerable adults they abused is at best an afterthought.

But Nancy never stopped thinking about New Creation; not only of their complicity in her abuse, but also of the love and community that drew her to see them as her family. In the summer of last year, she contacted me with a surprising piece of news: New Creation had hired a new pastor, and when that new pastor, Shana Green, discovered their new congregation’s history with Nancy, they realized that they couldn’t in good conscience remain employed by the church unless the church took authentic responsibility for its role in abusing Nancy. Shana reached out to Nancy, Nancy reached out to me, and what followed was one of the most life-affirming processes of repair that I’ve ever witnessed.

To see the church service that resulted, I invite you to watch the video we’ve embedded here. Pastor Shana’s remarks begin at the 35:00 minute mark. Nancy’s remarks begin at 47:00. For those interested in what this kind of repentance and repair work looks like from a survivor-centered perspective, I recommend viewing both.

If you prefer to read, Nancy’s remarks are printed below. For more information about Nancy’s advocacy work, the Kaufman House, and the federal case against Arlan and Linda Kaufman, check out the following links.

Stephanie Krehbiel, Executive Director

The Girl Who Cried “Wolf!”, a memoir by Nancy Jensen
A Very Private Residence: Unlocking the Secrets of the Kaufman House, by Cathy Conrad
Arlan and Linda Kaufman at Mennonite Abuse Prevention
“Closing the House of Horrors,” video, Disability Rights Center of Kansas

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From Pastor Shana Green’s introduction of Nancy:

“This is hard, because I know that some of you may feel that I have went a little rogue.  This is my first month, this is a huge thing, I did not follow every protocol. I did not cross every “t”, I did not dot every “i.” What I have chosen instead is to put Nancy first. I have chosen to allow my integrity and the spirit to guide me, and to partner with you in the hard work of righteousness. Knowing that my absence when it happened does not clear me from culpability now. I do not know where my decision to do this day will leave me, here in this community or otherwise. But I do know that right now, today, we are New Creation. In its strengths, in its flaws, in its gifts, in its challenges. And I am thankful for this opportunity to do what should have been done years ago. I thank God that it’s not too late. I thank God that I am here for such a time as this. I thank God that Nancy, despite us, has been supported, loved, cared for, in her absence from here, and that she carries within her the courage to come and speak with us today. So Nancy, in the fullness of who God is, in the fullness of who you are and all that it’s taken to get you here today, I invite you, without rules, without regulation, without censorship, without a time limit, I invite you to share your story, in spirit, and in truth.”

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Text of Nancy Jensen’s remarks:

Thank you, Shana, for that introduction.

When I learned that Shana was hired without ever knowing about me, I realized how much I was hidden. How much my story was hidden. I wondered how many other NCFC pastors over the years have pastored this community without knowing about me.

In 1975, Gordon loaned me a book called Living Together In A World Falling Apart, a Handbook on Christian Community, by Dave and Neta Jackson. I wanted very much to be a part of something like that. I went to Newton to visit the New Creation Fellowship intentional community that had formed there. I liked the people and their way of living, and they agreed that I could become part of their community.

So in 1976, at the age of 20, I moved in at New Creation Fellowship. This intentional community consisted of 2 different household groups at that time – Walkway and Alabare’. First, I lived in the corner house on Elm and 11th, in a corner bedroom, and shortly after that I moved into the Walkway household. Walkway household consisted of two houses, one on 11th and the other on 10th with a backyard walkway between them; thus, the name Walkway House. The household consisted of two families, 4 children, and 3 singles. We cooked and ate together, shared chores, and held household meetings every week in one of the two Walkway houses. I lived in the house of Jake and Irene and their two young boys. For church member meetings and worship services we met together with the other household, Alabare’, which consisted of two houses next to each other. I lived there in the New Creation community from 1976 until 1979. It was a special time of learning more about my connection to God and God’s people.

During that time I have memories of special songs like “Safe in the Father’s Arms,” although today I realized Gordon didn’t write it until 1983! And meaningful Scriptures like John 8:32–
And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

I remember the first time we shared communion and had foot washing – very meaningful rituals for me. I remember Easter celebrations with a dance and sending off balloons into the air, and Easter Sunrise Service at Ash Street Park. The service always included singing the song, “Was It a Morning Like This,” with music and lyrics by Jim Croegaert from Reba Place, which Sandy Patti made famous. These are all incredible memories of experiences that nurtured my faith while living at New Creation.

I also experienced some pretty crazy things in my relationship with New Creation Fellowship. Jake and Irene Pauls in my household felt the Lord was calling them to help me experience some things that I had missed in my own family-of-origin due to my history of sexual abuse by my father and brother and the old man across the street, and my conflicted relationship with my mother. Back then when people would join the church, it was a really big celebration. So in July of 1976 I joined New Creation Fellowship, and I also was “adopted” into Jake and Irene’s family. The reparenting experiment started.

I went along with the Pauls’ on a trip to Canada to meet their parents and relatives. I remember that it was the first time I had ever eaten vinegar and salt potato chips, and I fell in love with them. I also loved hearing their parents speak low German.

But when we got home, everything changed.

Although most mental health practitioners do not regard reparenting as a legitimate form of therapy, a consultant psychologist, John Lehman from Reba Place, a sister intentional community in another state, recommended that it could be beneficial to have me relate only to the mother of this family in order to learn how to trust and relate appropriately to a woman as a mother figure. Reba Place was a sister intentional community in Illinois. It was kind of the hub of all the other Mennonite intentional communities that were being created. It was like the Jerusalem of those communities. (John Lehman, like Arlan Kaufman, was sexually abusing patients.)

All of my adult relationships and interactions in the NCFC community ended with the onset of this experiment. Now all of my relationships were filtered through my adopted mother Irene. I could no longer stay for after-supper sharing with the adults in our household or attend members’ meetings,. All of my adult relationships were taken away. I don’t know if this was a members decision, or if it was just John Lehman and the Pauls’s decision.

When my 21st birthday was approaching, my “mother” told me that we would celebrate it as my 16th birthday, since in this role-play scenario, I was not yet an adult.

During part of this time I was employed as a kitchen and dining aide at a local nursing home. When I went to work, they saw me as a young adult, and treated me like a young adult. But when I got home, I was once again expected to take on the role of a 15- or 16-year-old adolescent, and I was treated like one. It was most confusing, to say the least.

After a time, for reasons that are still not clear to me, it was suddenly decided that the reparenting experiment should end. I was told that I could now relate to other people in the community as an independent young single adult and was no longer supposed to relate to Irene as my “mother.” I had no say in this decision. I felt completely adrift and emotionally abandoned. For the others in my “family,” this had clearly been just a kind of role-play; however, for me, being part of their family was my identity. The situation was made more difficult for me by the fact that I continued to live in the same house with my former adopted parents and their two children.

I was keenly aware that I had not been able to experience a real relationship with the father figure in my New Creation family throughout the reparenting role-play, since everything was filtered through my “mother.” Not only had I been sexually abused by my own biological father in the past, but now once again I felt I had been cheated out of a normal relationship with a father figure. At this time God as Father became very real and especially important to me. He was truly the only Father I could absolutely count on, and I clung to that assurance. He became “Daddy God” to me.

The “reparenting” experience ended without me understanding why. I didn’t know I had done so wrong that I could no longer be part of Irene and Jake’s “family.” I didn’t know until recently why it ended.

No one at New Creation has ever taken responsibility for the harm done by the “reparenting” experiment. It was just treated like a problem I had. Recently, I was given a document from my file at Prairie View about a meeting that Pastor Steve Schmidt had with my therapist and some other Prairie View staff, in 1988. Steve said this about my relationship with New Creation: “She has been quite difficult to handle, very dependent and burned out a number of relationships there. Lately they have been trying to treat her as an adult and peer and set realistic limits in terms of the attention they give her.” I never knew that this meeting happened.

I know that the New Creation Fellowship community members did not know how to help me. I didn’t know how to help me either. I didn’t yet have the skills I needed to ask for what I needed. But the “reparenting” was extremely harmful. It left me more confused about how I was supposed to relate to the New Creation community without being punished for having needs and not knowing how to ask for them correctly. After my memoir came out in 2013, Irene wrote me a beautiful letter of apology for mistakes that were made in the past and affirmation for my ongoing journey of recovery. That meant a great deal to me even today. Especially today. It brought a lot of healing.

In 1979, I left New Creation Fellowship to return to Canon City, Colorado. This came after I had become increasingly uncomfortable about continuing to live in the household with my former adopted parents while no longer having that relationship with them. I had no experience in how to relate effectively to the other adults – singles or married – because I didn’t know what I had apparently done wrong to have lost the right to relate to them in the first place.

When I returned to Canon, I was excited, hoping that my experience with Irene at New Creation would have brought about enough positive changes in my behavior so that the relationship with my mom would be better.

I soon learned that it wasn’t going to happen. I could change the way I tried to relate to her, but she continued to be the same as she had always been. That was a rude awakening.

My childhood pastor, Paul Leaming, was a trusted person in my life, and still pastored at the United Methodist Church I attended as a child. It was good to continue to hear his powerful messages. But something was missing. In spite of the craziness of the reparenting experiment, I missed being connected with a group of people living together like the early Christians in the Book of Acts, sharing resources and walking together in their faith.

Pastor Paul Leaming met with me in his office and said, “You are looking for community, and you are not going to find it here. You need to go back to Newton. You need to go back to New Creation Fellowship because that’s where you knew who you were in Christ, and that’s where you knew Father God. You need to go back there.” So, I decided to take his advice and return to New Creation Fellowship in Kansas.

When I returned to Newton, I got an apartment in the basement of a house that used to be a New Creation Fellowship household. I discovered that a lot of things had changed while I was. The church members were no longer meeting for worship in the basement of one of the houses. They were meeting in a building in town where the chairs would be set up before the service and torn down afterward. Some of the people I was committed to when I lived there before had left New Creation, and new people were coming in. The membership process, the way you became a member of the church, had changed. Now it was more like going to a traditional church.. The congregation had small groups that were kind of like the former household groups, but the members didn’t live together, and it was no longer an intentional community with shared treasury and property. I felt unfinished and adrift. I didn’t know how commitments to each other as a community of faith had changed now that it was no longer an intentional community like before. I wondered where I fit in.

One of the biggest things that had changed was in my relationship with the church personally. Steve, the Pastor, came to see me and indicated that the church members realized that they had made some mistakes in relating to me when I lived there before, and they didn’t want to make the same mistakes again. He didn’t name what those mistakes were, though. In light of my mental health issues, they wanted me to start seeing a therapist at Prairie View.

At Prairie View I started individual therapy with a helpful Mennonite therapist who knew all about New Creation Fellowship and some of the people who were members there. He and his wife had actually been part of the intentional community in the very early days, so he understood the dynamics of communal living – both the benefits and the dependency it created. He knew Steve, and he knew Norm from living in Hesston.

After struggling with living alone in my apartment and being unable to hold down a job consistently and going in and out of the Day Hospital and inpatient unit for four years, New Creation members Rhonda and Anthony invited me to live with them for a year to see if that might help decrease my recurrent crises and inpatient hospitalizations. Unfortunately, there was not much change during that year. But I have wonderful memories of living with them.

About a week before all of this changed, during an inpatient stay at Prairie View, my case worker asked me, “What do you get in Prairie View that you don’t get outside, in your community?” That was a real spark for me. Why am I ok in here, but when I’m out there, I have to call Gordon and Jeanne and Norm and Vicki ten thousand times to make sure that we’re ok? At Prairie View, I could ask for things rather than acting out. When I learned what I needed, I could ask for what I needed. I gained new insight that could help me get my needs met more effectively. But it was too late. I had burned out my New Creation friends.

But I didn’t know who I was without New Creation. If they were happy with me, I was happy. If they were upset with me, I was upset. Looking back on it, when I got “reparented,” I never learned how to take care of me; I only learned about how to be with Irene.

At that point my therapist Randy, along with Steve the pastor and some of my New Creation small group members, decided that I would be going to live at Kaufman House.

Kaufman House was a group living treatment facility in Newton for persons with mental illness. The people who knew me best felt that this setting could meet my need for both household and therapy – community living combined with treatment by trained professionals. I felt that I could trust these people who wanted me to go to Kaufman House. In order to be loved by them, I felt that I had to trust them. I had to believe that they knew what was best for me. If I disagreed or resisted, I could lose their love. So, I went.

I’m not going to go into all the horrible things happened to me at Kaufman House right now. But I will share this. In the Kaufman House, there is a room with no furniture, and an ugly orange shag carpet. On this side, there are French doors, but they’re boarded up. On that side, there’s a window, but it’s boarded up. There’s a light hanging down, but you have no control of the light. There’s a bathroom. If you’re lucky, you get to use it. Otherwise, there’s a bucket.

After the first time I was there, I told my New Creation small group. Nothing happened. Then I was at Norm and Vicki’s house, babysitting or something, and I found a memo that Arlan had written to members of my small group, and I don’t know who else, telling them that I was being noncompliant. That his treatment was kind of radical compared to Prairie View, and I just wanted to get out of that room so I could be with New Creation again, and we all know what happens when Nancy’s back with you. I spent three weeks in that room.

After the three weeks was over, Kaufman sent me back to Colorado. I can say more about that, but what you need to know is that I was sent to Colorado to make a decision. The decision was that either I had to come back to the Kaufman House and do everything he said and believe everything he told me, or stay in Colorado.

Arlan got everyone, or almost everyone, at New Creation to sign a letter to me stating the same thing. The only good thing about that letter was that there was a plan for what I needed to do to get out. The church accepted what Kaufman said about my needing to return to Kaufman House. Steve was really clear that in order for me to be part of New Creation, I had to go back to the Kaufman House.

I need to share where my head has always been in relation to me and New Creation. In the book of Ruth, Ruth says this to Naomi. And this is what I always said to New Creation.

Urge me not to leave you, or turn back from following you.
Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people. And your God will be my God.

So in my head, New Creation was Naomi. And I was Ruth. And I would do anything to be part of New Creation.

I had come back to Newton because I longed to be part of New Creation again. As I look back on it, maybe it was a warped sense of me identifying with Ruth and wanting to be a part of New Creation as badly as Ruth wanted to be with Naomi. That is how I wanted it to be in this world of mine, but that’s not at all what happened. I will say that some of the relationships I had at New Creation felt like deeply committed relationships – them with me and me with them — which is why the Book of Ruth was so significant to me.

So I came back from Colorado and went back to Kaufman House. I want to be really clear: I did not come back because of Kaufman. I came back because I wanted to be part of New Creation again. This time, by the grace of God, there was a clear plan for me when I got back to Kaufman House — the things everybody agreed that I would have to do in order to leave there.

By Easter of 1987 I had met all the goals Kaufman had set for me (even though all of them were things he had told me repeatedly that I would never be able to do). 1987 was the best Resurrection Sunday I ever had. I was out. I had my own place just down the road on Allison. New Creation was proud of me. I had a wonderful job at the Peabody Nursing Home as an activity director. Things were going good.

Then I lost my job. Not because of mental illness or anything like that; I didn’t document something correctly, or something like that. But by losing my job, I became very depressed. That was one thing Arlan wanted me to make me believe, that I could never hold down a job, so I shouldn’t even try to hold down a job. So when I lost the job, of course, I thought maybe he was right.

A few weeks after I lost my job, I was attending a meeting of my New Creation small group, and Arlan called. I think it was Norm who answered the phone. Arlan said in that call that I could get my job back if I would agree to come back to the Kaufman House again. The implication was that he had power over my employment. This was too much for me, and I ended up at Prairie View again, in Day Hospital.

At this point, my church knew what happened at Kaufman House, and Prairie View knew what had happened at Kaufman House.

One day at Prairie View, Dr. Yoder said something about a thing that had happened at Kaufman House the night before. And I lost it. I yelled that it was their fault–I can go into detail about what that was about.

Because of that incident, I reported Kaufman to the authorities, this time to SRS, but once again I left thinking I wasn’t believed. A week or two after I reported to SRS, I talked to somebody there. They wouldn’t tell me what they found out, but they gave me a phone number. SO I went home and called that number. I found out that Kaufman was not allowed to have a treatment center, which meant he wasn’t allowed to do the therapy, he wasn’t allowed to administer the medications, and he definitely wasn’t allowed to have the room that he had. I also got a letter from Mennonite Mutual Aid on the same day, stating that my insurance was not going to pay for my time at Kaufman House because Kaufman did not have a medical doctor signing off on his documentation and billings, as was required.

I remember storming to Jeanne and Gordon’s house with the letter, saying “Look! Look! I told you! I was right!” I went to Steve’s office and said, “I told you! I told you! I was right!” I went to Prairie View and did the unspeakable: I walked in on sessions. I said to Randy, “Look! Look! I was right!” I went to Dr. Yoder and said, “Look! Look! I was right!” I went to SRS and said, “OK, let’s do something!” And they said they couldn’t do anything, because all the people at the Kaufman house were consenting adults.

At that moment, I was very broken. I ate a whole bunch of pills and drank a whole bunch of beer. If it wasn’t for my cat jumping on the counter, who knows what would have happened. Prairie View was full, so I had to go to a hospital in Wichita.

Upon my discharge, Steve, Arlan, and Elsie Steelberg informed me together that they were recommending I return to Kaufman House, because I was not likely to be safe at my apartment.

It was the first time I knew from my gut all the way up, that there was no way I’d ever go back there. I said to Steve Schmidt, in front of Arlan, “I’m not going back there, even if it means you don’t love me anymore.”

I was allowed to return to my apartment with the understanding that I would continue at Day Hospital, but I was still struggling with the trauma of my horrendous experience at the Kaufman House, the invalidation of not being believed and being repeatedly pressured to return to that house of horrors. Randy believed that I needed a place of safety and I needed to be around people. Since I was clear that I was NOT going back to Kaufman House, arrangements were made for me to go to Meadowlark, a residential program for people with mental illness in rural Newton.

The church at this point made it clear that my relationship with them would have to change. No more small group for me! The only thing I could attend was church. Thank God for Elsie Schmidt and Lois Jean, even though they were breaking the rules. This felt like a punishment for my refusal to go back to Kaufman House. The big change was that I would only be allowed to be at church on Sundays, no more participating in small group; however, I did still spend time with Elsie Schmidt, a supportive friend from New Creation.

The goal of Meadowlark was to get me to go to the Elm Street House to live. The Elm Street House was across from where I lived at New Creation. New Creation was still in the neighborhood. Why would I want to be that close if I couldn’t be a part of them? If I couldn’t be at New Creation, then why was I here?

With these new restrictions in place, it was clear to me that I needed to leave Kansas and go back home to Colorado. I wondered, “Why, if I can’t be a full member of the church, am I here in Kansas? After all, wanting to have a real relationship with New Creation was what brought me back here again.”

This was a significant turning point for me. It was the first time I had made a decision for myself without consulting New Creation or worrying about how they might react. I made the decision and then told the church during sharing time in worship, “My mom is coming and I am moving back to Colorado.”

I remember Daddy God telling me at that time, “ Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” I felt that what He was saying was that I had done everything I could do about the Kaufman House situation: I told my church, I told Prairie View, I told the authorities that had the power to do something about it, and still nobody believed me. So, I believed that when the Lord said “Vengeance is mine,” it was now in God’s hands, and he would bring the Kaufmans to account for what they did. I just could not imagine that it was going to take 18 years!

There’s a part of me that wants to be angry. There’s a part of me that’s afraid to be angry at New Creation, because I still love you.

But this is also the community that taught me that the truth will set you free. I’m so glad for you Shana, for inviting me here today. Because I want to share with all of you the freedom of knowing the truth.

What I’ve shared with you here is the truth. I was abused by Arlan Kaufman, sexually, physically, and psychologically. I was spiritually abused by the New Creation community, who taught me repeatedly that they would not love me unless I agreed to endure Arlan’s abuse. And even after Arlan was convicted and imprisoned, New Creation members stayed silent about their history with me. When Arlan’s family members wrote letters in the newspaper, you guys were quiet. When Arlan’s sister attacked me in every public forum she could, you were quiet.

Yes, there were times since then that we met. But I was the one who had to ask for it. There has never been—except for Lois Jean, who is the one who told me that Kaufman got arrested—no one in New Creation, in their own time and own space, talked to me about it. It was always me who had to ask to talk about it.

When I found out that this history—the connection of New Creation to the Kaufman House and Prairie View—I wanted to ask, am I a shameful secret? I’m glad I was healed in spite of you, but I sure wish we had been healed together.

I still have so many questions for this community. Questions like, “Who was I to you all these years? What was I to you?”

Was there ever a time when I was not the problem?

Why did you hide me?

Did you ever believe me? And if you did, why didn’t you speak up?

Were you ever as committed to me as I was to you?

Did you ever care?

Were the times that we had real, or was it just because I asked for them, afterwards?