Tri-Cities wrestling coach, wife sentenced for beating adopted children with custom paddle

A former Tri-Cities coach and his wife have been sentenced for abusing their adopted children.

Vernon Vogtman Jr., 45, and Heather Vogtman, 44, were accused of beating their four adopted children with a custom-made paddle over things such as someone eating banana bread or a broken window, leaving them covered in bruises .

At the time, Vernon Vogtman was the head wrestling coach for Kennewick High School.

They’ve been out of jail since shortly after their May 2023 arrest.

Vernon Vogtman, a custom home builder, was originally charged with one count of third-degree assault of a child and three counts of third-degree assault causing bodily injury with a weapon.

Heather Vogtman was charged with one count of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon for an incident stemming from December 2022. Her husband was named as a related party in that incident, according to court records.

They reached an agreement to each plead guilty to four misdemeanor counts of fourth-degree assault domestic violence.

While Benton County Superior Court Commissioner Andrew Howell largely followed the plea deal, he drew the line at letting the conviction fall off their records.

The Vogtmans each received a two-year suspended sentence and will pay $800 in court fees. That means they won’t serve any time in jail, but they aren’t eligible to have the conviction automatically removed from their records after the two years.

“You having convictions on your record for lining your kids up and beating them with a custom made paddle is appropriate,” Howell said.

There also is a no contact order in place that will allow the juvenile dependency court to continue working with the Vogtmans and the children. If it is appropriate and the children agree to joint counseling, they could be reunited.

However, both Deputy Prosecutor Taylor Clark and an advocate for the children stressed that is unlikely.

“These children have been traumatized at the hands of their adoptive parents, they don’t want to bond with them anymore, they don’t want to be their adoptive children anymore,” Clark told the judge. “They’re OK with being in foster care until they’re 18, that’s how traumatized they are.”

Despite that, the Vogtmans’ defense attorney Catherine Harkins said the children were too young to make that decision on their own.

In their statements, both Heather and Vernon Vogtman said they were just trying to make their children be better people and went too far. Harkins implied the children had behavioral issues that became too much for the Vogtmans to handle.

“It was 24 years ago that I became a father, and at that moment I told myself I would always be there for my children as I grew up without a father in my home. I never wanted any kid to go through what I did,” Vernon Vogtman said.

“I must admit that I shamefully last year broke that promise, as when I was disciplining my children I spanked them too hard. It not only left a painful mark on them, it left a painful mark on their heart,” he said.

Heather Vogtman said she was truly sorry for spanking her children too hard and hurting them not only physically, but emotionally.

Alleged abuse

The Vogtmans were arrested after one of the children showed up at a police station in early 2023.

The teen told police that Vernon Vogtman Jr. had been hitting him and three other adopted siblings with a large paddle.

The kids were ages 10 to 16 years old, court documents show.

The paddle was described as 2-feet long, 3-inches wide and an inch thick, with duct tape on the handle and a rope to help with grip, according to court documents.

Vogtman, who goes by “Junior,” was employed by the Kennewick School District as an assistant and a head wrestling coach from Fall 2015 until February 2023, according to district officials.

The teen told police in May 2023 that two weeks earlier some banana bread had gone missing at their home and Vogtman beat all of the children with the paddle in an effort to get one to admit to taking it, according to court documents.

The children told investigators their mother also hit them with the paddle, said the documents.

Then the night before the teen went to the police station, a window on a canopy was broken at the home. The teen told investigators Vogtman lined up the kids and hit them with the paddle, then asked if anyone wanted to confess.

When no one did, he repeated the process seven times, hitting them harder each time.

One of the children later told a forensic interviewer that he was made to pull his pants down. They were then made to sit on their knees and put their faces on the ground. The child had large visible bruising from the paddle, according to the documents.

Each of the children later separately gave similar accounts of the abuse to a child forensic Interviewer, said police. Officers went to the house and took the children into protective custody.

All four had similar bruising, investigators said.