“That’s all there is to it! You are arrested! And you’ll find nothing better to respond with than a lamblike bleat: “Me? What for?” That’s what arrest is: it’s a blinding flash and a blow which shifts the present instantly into the past and the impossible into omnipotent actuality.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Gulag Archipelago
Solzhenitsyn described the horrors of Soviet persecution during the early to mid-20th century in his book The Gulag Archipelago. Not only did he describe his arrest and imprisonment in Soviet Russia in the 1940s, for the high crime of criticizing Stalin in a private letter he wrote, but he also told the stories of countless others who were forged in the fire and fury of the brutal Soviet regime. The arrests, the interrogations, the injustice, the suffering, the insanity — Americans would do well to consider this history in light of what is happening in our own land today. Though the decades have passed and technology has advanced since the Soviet gulags, the playbook is the same. Now we find ourselves wading painfully close to the Western gulag archipelagos of our time and the stories they bring.
In 2022, on a crisp October morning around 7 am, I shuffled into the kitchen to make my morning hot tea before heading back to my room to nurse my baby. Three of our children gathered their backpacks and lunch and walked out the back door headed to our vehicle to load up for school. My husband was getting ready for an important business meeting and about to leave to take our children to school.
Moments later, our peaceful, quiet life in rural Tennessee had come to a screeching halt and the full force of absolute chaos descended upon our home. The banging on the doors and windows rattled through our farmhouse. The yelling demands of strangers, “Open UP! Open UP! FBI, OPEN UP! colluded with the chaotic noise of rattling windows and doors.
My husband approached our front door, peered out and yelled back, “By whose authority?”
"FBI, OPEN UP!!!!!!!”, they demanded.
“Who are you looking for?” my husband said.
Pointing a finger at my husband an agent barked, “YOU!”
Seeing the vehicles outside and the tactical gear and assault weapons and knowing three of our children were outside and other children scattered through the house, my husband decided the quickest way to de-escalate the volatile chaos was him in handcuffs.
At that moment, our daughter ran in my room frantic. Her voice shaking, “The FBI are here and they are arresting daddy!” The words hardly computed. WHAT IN THE WORLD? WHY? I ran out of my room in my pajamas and looked down the hallway. I saw men in tactical gear with guns standing in our front doorway and on the porch. My husband was turned around up against the glass door as an agent had a hold of his arm having already secured his wrists in metal handcuffs.
“WHAT IS GOING ON? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHO ARE YOU?”, I demanded. Not an agent answered. My husband said calmly to me, “These are the times in which we live! I need a shirt.” One of the agents barked, “Go get him a shirt.” They were quickly moving him off the porch and into one of the unmarked SUV vehicles sitting in front of our house.
I ran to our room to get him something to wear as it obvious they were taking him with or without a shirt. I thought to grab my phone off my nightstand and started pushing buttons hoping to get the phone camera functioning as I ran back to the front of the house. My heart was pounding and my hands were shaking. My husband was already in the vehicle by the time I returned but two agents were still in my doorway. “Why are you here? What is going on?” I still demanded.
After seeing my phone, one agent started talking, “but if you’re not going to let me….then I’ll just….” as he turned to leave, he flicked the door back at me. I followed him out.
“NO, I want to know why you were banging on my door with a gun!”, I demanded.
“You’re not going to tell me anything?”, I said.
He turns around and says, “I..I... I tried.”
I respond, “No, you didn’t!”
He says, “Yes, I did.”
“NO you didn’t! You did not try!”, I responded.
I walked down by the first vehicle where my husband sat behind the dark windows. “This is NOT Acceptable!”
I proceeded to walk to the other vehicle when I noticed another agent walking from our back yard carrying an assault rifle.
“Can I have your name? You’re not going to give me your name. You’re not going to give me any information?”, I plead one last time.
He completely ignored me. He got into the vehicle. The vehicles backed out of our driveway and drove away with my husband. The surreal video ends.
Later, I found out that the agent in our back yard had approached my three children outside and held them back from going back inside our home and questioned them about where they were going and who else was in the house.
Here is the short video I captured:
What country are we living in where armed men swoop in with unmarked vehicles wearing tactical vests with velcro FBI patches and carry assault rifles who pound on my house and quickly handcuff and kidnap my husband off our porch? Where agents approach and question my children in our back yard with an assault rifle at 7 am in the morning? Where agents ignore all my pleas for information while they terrorize me and my children? No identification. No explanation. No warrant shown at the time of arrest. No notification to our local sheriff. This is happening in our country!
I walked to the end of the driveway following the vehicles as they backed out and watched them drive off with my husband. The most surreal, helpless, frightening weight continued to bear down on me. Was I dreaming? I didn’t feel the rocks on my bare feet when I was following the vehicles out of our driveway but as I took a step back to the house, I felt the sharp rocks jab into my bare feet. This was definitely not a dream. It was a nightmare.
After they drove off with my husband, I ran back into the house and found my children in our living room crying, shaking and scared. Our daughter was curled up in a ball with her hands over her head crying. Shaking and crying myself, I told my children God would protect daddy and what those men did was absolutely evil. We cried. We prayed.
We spent the next 6 hours trying to find out what happened to my husband and where he was. That afternoon, I received a short phone call from the federal courthouse in Nashville. A woman told me my husband was being held in the Nashville federal holding facility, informed me of his charges and said he would be released later that day. I could not believe what I was hearing.
The unknown voice said, “I only have 2 minutes to talk but as you know, Mrs. Vaughn, your husband has been charged with ……”
Umm, “as you know”?? I interrupted, “Excuse me, but I actually don’t know anything. All I know is FBI agents, MAYBE—I’m not sure if they were even legit, came to my house at 7 am this morning with guns drawn and kidnapped my husband….” She said something like… “Ohhh, I can understand how upsetting that is….” I responded, “No, I don’t think you understand.” She went on to say my husband was being held in a federal holding facility and about to go before a judge and would most likely be released later that afternoon. The phone call didn’t last long. At least I finally knew where he was.
After my husband appeared before a federal judge, they released him. He had no phone, no wallet, no glasses, no money, no transportation and was over sixty miles from home. He borrowed a cell phone from a stranger on the street and called me to tell me his location. I booked it to Nashville to pick up my husband in a Chick-fil-A parking lot. We had a joyous yet somber reunion later on that evening with our family after such an unbelievable, surreal day.
Biden’s DOJ charged my husband with two felony counts for participating in a prolife event one and a half years earlier –an event in which he never committed any crime and was never charged or arrested for any local or state crimes! The federal government was now bringing charges against him: 1- violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, FACE Act, 1 year and $10,000 and 2- Conspiracy to violate rights secured by the federal government, 10 years, $350,000 in fines and 3 years supervised release. Now, as we await trial, my husband has been on pre-trial release conditions for a year. He is required to report to his pretrial officer every month and has a travel radius of a few surrounding counties in our area. Any travel outside of those counties requires a lengthy, invasive form to be filled out, prior approval and a travel permit issued before traveling. Wow— an early morning, reckless, armed FBI arrest and facing 11 years in federal prison and over a quarter of a million dollars in fines and totalitarian communist style monitoring and travel restrictions for being at an abortion mill! Gulag Archipelago: American Regime Edition, much?
After the raid and arrest, I was physically shaky for a full 24 hours. I did not sleep at all that night. I lay awake jumping at every noise. My heart pounded. My hands and feet would not stop sweating. My stomach was in a terrible knot. My physical state was traumatized but my spirit trusted and hoped all would be well. I knew our God was big…bigger and mightier than all our enemies. Our kids were traumatized, jumpy, sleepless. Over the days and weeks, the story continued to unfold and we discovered the extent of madness we were dealing with but we also discovered the overwhelming peace that comes from an extraordinary God who fights our battles for us.
Biden’s DOJ was and is targeting prolife people. That is clear! The conspiracy this weaponized justice department is projecting on us is actually what they were and are doing. After Roe V. Wade was overturned in June of 2022, the Biden DOJ conspired to form the Reproductive Rights Task Force in July of 2022 to “formalize and pursue protecting reproductive freedoms”. They have used a 1993 federal law signed by Clinton, the FACE Act, and combined it with conspiracy charges to pursue, with a vengeance, peaceful prolife people with extreme charges and excessive fines and jail time. Grandmas and grandpas have been indicted including an 88 year old concentration camp survivor, Eva Edl, who was indicted with my husband. Fathers arrested during reckless raids in front of their young children. Wives facing an unknown future of having their husbands put in federal prison for lengthy sentences and exorbitant fines. Some of these prolifers are in multiple indictments and facing an insane about of time in prison --- over 20 and 30 years.
Biden’s DOJ is prosecuting and locking up those who dissent, those who hold contrary political and ideological views to the regime and, in our case, those who dare hold the view that abortion is murder and life is precious and worth standing up for.
What is currently going on in our country sounds strikingly familiar to Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. Are we ready to engage and respond with the courage and faith needed to confront lies with truth? I fear our country has been lulled asleep by comfort, leisure, compromise, and apathy for far too many decades. I wonder how far into the playbook we will get before people wake up and see what is really going on? Or we will still cling to the fallacious belief that such things could never happen here?
Such things are happening here.
It’s time for truth to stand in the face of lies. Standing for truth is always right and is always the solution to defeating evil lies. That time has come.
Bethany Vaughn
—wife of Paul Vaughn
—mother of 11
Follow our story and the others indicted in this case at www.stifledcry.com
Support us at http://givesendgo.com/prolifedad
My husband writes at paultn.substack.com to our comfort and ease. But standing for truth is always right.
“We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.” -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn