![]() This kidnapping lasted for approximately four months, until she was rescued again by the FBI.īroberg continued to believe the make-believe alien story up until her 16th birthday. He brought her to California and enrolled her in a Catholic school, posing as her father and a CIA agent, according to the documentary. “Abducted in Plain Sight” viewers learned B kidnapped Broberg a second time from her parents’ home in Idaho in 1976 when she was 14. The following two years, B kept in contact with Broberg, who said she felt she loved him. All but 45 days of his prison sentence were suspended, and B ended up only serving 10 days in prison. He was sentenced to five years’ probation and five years in prison. The affidavits compromised the FBI’s case against B. Both parents claimed in the documentary that if they didn’t do this, B would expose a sex act that Bob and B engaged in prior to the kidnapping. After Broberg’s first kidnapping, B blackmailed her parents, Bob and Mary Ann, into signing affidavits claiming he had consent to bring their daughter to Mexico. It was also their last - a year later, Berchtold committed suicide. His goal, as it turned out, was to see Jan again even if it meant bringing her to court, and Abducted in Plain Sight includes footage of their first encounter in nearly 30 years. Mary Ann and Jan Broberg wrote a book about the experience, Stolen Innocence: The Jan Broberg Story, and shortly before its release in 2004, Berchtold resurfaced to refute their accounts, even filing a lawsuit to prevent its release. It took her several more years to tell her family the full story about what Berchtold did to her, and even more time for the Brobergs to reckon with their own culpability. In the documentary, she describes coming to the realization that none of consequences that came with failing their “mission” actually came true, and how quickly the illusion shattered. In 1976, when Jan disappeared again, the Brobergs didn’t suspect Berchtold was responsible until the FBI discovered that he had enrolled their then-14-year-old daughter in a Catholic school in another state.Īfter the second abduction, Berchtold was forced to sever contact with Jan, but she continued to believe in their alien mission for several more years. ![]() He continued to contact Jan, at times sleeping in her bed, and grew increasingly insistent about his desire to marry her, but the Brobergs still never contacted police. Upon Jan’s return home, the couple not only resisted the FBI’s attempts to hold Berchtold fully accountable, they even began to question whether he was such a bad guy after all. When he abducted Jan for the first time, the Brobergs waited three days to alert the authorities, unwilling to confront the reality that a man they trusted could actually be a threat. ![]() Abducted in Plain Sight is certainly a cautionary tale about the insidious tactics child predators use to isolate, manipulate, and control their young victims - but it’s also a deeply disturbing story of adult denial.īoth parents present themselves as being utterly clueless about the existence of child predators, so bowled over by Berchtold’s apparent warmth and charm that they allowed him, for months, to sleep in Jan’s bed because he said his therapist recommended it. But what makes the documentary particularly shocking is the ease with which Berchtold was able to groom Robert and Mary Ann Broberg into giving him unfettered access to their young daughter both before and after Jan’s kidnapping. Told primarily through extensive interviews with the Broberg family, Abducted in Plain Sight reveals the truly mind-blowing details of what Jan endured as Berchtold’s physical, psychological and emotional captive. (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)Ībducted in Plain Sight is the second full-length feature directed by documentary cinematographer Skye Borgman, whose diverse credits include We Are Galapagos (2018) and Quiet Riot: Well Now You’re Here, There’s No Way Back. This stranger-than-fiction true story only gets more outrageous, dumbfounding and utterly un predictable from there. Not so predictable is the eventual revelation that, in 1976, Berchtold abducted Jan for a second time. Somewhat predictably, the documentary soon reveals that in 1974, two years after befriending the Brobergs, Berchtold picked up 12-year-old Jan from school and disappeared with her for five weeks. ![]() So close that the Broberg girls come to view Berchtold, known as “B,” like a second father, especially middle daughter Jan. Set in the 1970s, Robert and Mary Ann Broberg and their three young daughters, Jan, Karen and Susan, are a nice Mormon family from Pocatello, Idaho, who quickly become close pals with their new neighbor, Robert Berchtold, and his wife and kids. The true crime documentary, Abducted in Plain Sight, which recently appeared on Netflix, initially seems to be a nightmarish but otherwise unremarkable suburban kidnapping story. ![]()
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