“The Day I Almost Died – by Frank Voegtlin”

Submitted Sept. 4, 2012 at 6:40 pm. http://religionscell.com/blog/?p=194

I was at the end of my ropes. I had been kicked out of school for being rebellious. My primary offense was going to the movies and watching rated PG-13 and rated R movies. But it was more than that. My thoughts did not align with my adoptive father, the IFB pastor. I was on my way out. I just needed to find that way out. I had been beaten black and blue to the point that I didn’t care anymore. I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone. My life sucked and so did my dad. F- him.

Then it happened one Saturday, Mr. B. dropped my brother and I off from working all day at the cabinet shop. Dad met us at the front door. The first thing he said was for me to go straight to the basement. I saw him take Mr. B. into the living room to talk.

While I was in the basement my mind ran crazy. What do I do? Should sneak upstairs and run out the back door? Should I sneak out through the garage? No, they’re watching me. I’ll get caught and make this worse. I’ll just wait here and see what happens. And wait and wait. It seemed as if I waited forever.

Then the upstairs door finally opened and he came down. He just looked at me for a minute.

(Paraphrased conversation)

“So where do you plan on going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar! Your friend Frank _ ratted you out. Going to the Caribbean huh?”
“If I could get there.”
“Do you think that I’m going to let you ruin MY Ministry like that?”
Ramble, ramble, and ramble this went on for hours with no remorse on my part. I was done. I was not backing down.
“Send me to a public school and let me live my life and I’ll stay.”
“You have no power to tell me what to do, this is not a negotiation.”
Then it happened….Nickel plated, German edition, Walther 38 to my temple.
“Do you know what I am going to do?”
“No”
“I am going to kill you. You do not deserve to live. You are destroying my ministry and God is not happy with you.”

A good while of this went on. He kept pushing me around the basement with the gun to my temple only to be interrupted by an occasional phone call.

Then it happened. I really didn’t care anymore. I was done. Just kill me. Then I did it. I turned my head so that the gun was to my forehead and I was looking him in the eyes. I looked him in the eyes and said, “Go ahead and kill me. It would be better than you.” (Dying was better than living with him.)

Stun. He looked at me with glazed eyes, welling with fury and yet did not know what to say. He was shocked. He pulled the gun down and said stand there I’ll be back. And there I stood.

He eventually came back down stairs and told me that he was not going to kill me because he could not explain my body. I was then taken to the church and put in one of the offices and put under lock and key and armed guards until the next morning when ”dad” (Roger Voegtlin) and Pastor H. drove me to my natural mother’s home in Louisville, Kentucky and “ dumped” me there. He then began a campaign with his attorneys to find someone to adopt me and for me to change my name. He wanted nothing to do with me. He completely abandoned me.

Part of me did die that day."

This is Frank Voeghtlin's "father" Roger Voeghtlin on Anderson Cooper which originally aired September 22, 2011. http://youtu.be/hEeoF_t4sfQ