When Bob was 3 yrs old his father passed away and in 1939 his mother married Joseph Ersol Berchtold who raised Bob and . Today, Jan Broberg has a "wonderful relationship" with her parents. Filmmaker Skye Borgman on the unbelievable twists and turns of the Jan Broberg kidnapping case, and the pieces of the story that didnt make it into her documentary, on Netflix. But this time you were seeing an actor bring your abuser to life, witnessing two actors portray you during this traumatic period, and seeing actors portray your family. He continued to try to terrorize me in the weirdest ways. Shes gone., The Brobergs relative calm in the face of their 12-year-old daughters abduction by an adult man is one of the most immediately disturbing elements of the story. What will I risk to get it? Part of the problem is that Abducted in Plain Sight, a 90-minute movie in a field populated mostly with six- or eight-hour series, is focused entirely on telling a story rather than illuminating it. If she failed to do this, the aliens warned, her sister Susan would be chosen instead, and harm would come to the rest of her family. We think hes in the parking lot. Im like, What? The movie includes pictures Berchtold took of Jan as a 12-year-old girl, all straw-colored hair, wide eyes, and freckles. By Nicky Idika. Mary Ann was involved in an eight-month affair with B post kidnapping while she was still married to Bob, even though she knew he was her daughters abductor. He talked incessantly about UFO sightings. But, as Welsh described, they were duped in a terrible, terrible way. The man Berchtold saw was not a licensed psychologist his license had been revoked. You have to believe victims. Jake Lacy in A Friend of the Family (Image credit: Peacock ) In the summer of 1972, Robert Berchtold moved a few blocks away from the Brogberg family in Pocatello, Idaho. Michael has been already been convicted and released for time served, but followup episodes happened, along with an HBO dramatization that appears further down in this list. Robert Berchtold was the Broberg's neighbor. My dad isnt dead. It was the thing that kept me obedient.. I keep telling Nick we have to do a series number two. Who is Robert Berchtold's Family? Manipulation and grooming are not understood by so many. Their childhood was . He got very angry. We didn't meet in person until we filmed the documentary, A Friend of the Family: True Evil. However, the family still wasn't rid of Robert Berchtold. Not as much as I have been in past years. And then this really deep sorrow and sadness for all the people, all the girls, his whole familyall the people who he had affected. Bob noticed that Berchtold had become sexually aroused. It was Jan.. After Brobergs first kidnapping, B blackmailed her parents, Bob and Mary Ann, into signing affidavits claiming he had consent to bring their daughter to Mexico. Shes your daughter. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Broberg told. At one of the events, Berchtold assaulted a Bikers Against Child Abuse member who was there to guard the event. His mother was still alive during the whole ordeal, she would have been 60 years old or so when he abducted Jan, Must have been hard for her witnessing this of her son. I get to be the examiner. He served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. [The older sister] came to the conference when he showed up with the gun. I didn't know it was wrong right away. If she did, he said, her dad would be killed, her sister Karen made blind, and Susan taken in her stead. Firstly Bob and Mary Ann let Berchtold share a bed with their daughter multiple times, knowing that he was being counselled for being attracted to children. Because maybe if I had known what I know now, what Im trying to tell the whole world now [with the series]that these predators dont stop [on their own]maybe the girls [Berchtold abused] after me wouldnt have [been abused]. I wasnt prepared for people to blame my parents. The Brobergs seemingly knew. Which is how those next four years, as you see in the series, unfold, because I really did think [the aliens] would take [my sister] if I didnt do the mission. I mean, Ive been married and divorced a number of times. We were in a car, and Bob pulled into a random neighborhood. That is the only reason we told our story. The reality, though, is that the extraordinary nature of the revelations in the film, and their insufficient excavation, end up overshadowing the much more urgent subject at hand. Robert Berchtold was born on November 6, 1920, and died at age 50 years old in August 1971. Although he ruined Jans childhood, Berchtold never fully paid for his vile crimes against Jan Broberg in prison. Through therapy, she learned to forgive them for not stopping the years of abuse she endured from B. Robert Berchtold was a well-known American truck driver, media face, retired US Army Officer who served the country during the Vietnam War and was also a convicted criminal suspect who kidnapped a too-young girl Jan Broberg in the 1970s. [Berchtold] was [close to another family] when he died. The hope for Abducted in Plain Sight, Borgman and Jan Broberg Felt have both said, is that it helps end the culture of silence around sexual abuse and assault. But, according to Broberg, both parents retracted their affidavits days after signing them. The Skye Borgmandirected documentary condensed this tale into 91 minutes. Jan, now 56,. [It was] something that my dad did to every boy I ever dated. The encounter quickly became sexual. I know that theyve been invited to share their side [of the story], including his ex-wife, but theyve never wanted to talk to anybody. The recording was a message from two aliens named Zeta and Zethra, telling Jan that she was half alien and needed to complete a mission to have a baby with Berchtold before her 16th birthday. When Broberg was 12, Robert Berchtold kidnapped her and played a recording that told that she was half-alien, and that she had to have a baby with Berchtold by the time she was 16 to save the. Because my happy, carefree world changed in an instantand that was the instant when I woke up with my arms and my feet restrained in a dark room and that voice, that was so terrifying. Berchtold didnt stop tracking you over the years. The 56-year-old actress, who was abducted, raped and abused by family friend Robert Berchtold in the 70s, Speaking to ET Online, Jan explained how her attacker didn't lie with her under the . A friend sent it to them. Congratulations on the seriesI definitely understand so much more about your experience. Jan and her mother, Mary-Ann Broberg, went on to do a tour for the book Stolen Innocence. The Peacock drama miniseries A Friend of the Family shows how Jan Broberg was kidnapped twice when she was a child after her abductor ingratiated himself with her parents. He brought her to California and enrolled her in a Catholic school, posing as her father and a CIA agent, according to the documentary. I mean, he just never really stopped. Berchtold, who was a local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leader, drugged and brainwashed Broberg when she was just 12 years old. He was a truck driver and served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. With her mother, she wrote a book, "Stolen Innocence," about her experiences. After Robert befriended Bob Broberg and his wife, Mary Ann Broberg, he quickly infiltrated their family unit and cozied up to their young daughter, Jan Broberg. How was that? In January 1974, Robert Berchtold was rebuked by the LDS . I already knew of Jan, before I was an adult, because Bob had talked about her. his) demands if she wanted her family to stay safe. Privacy Policy. Robert Berchtold is an abuser who groomed the Broberg family in order to become close to their 12-year-old daughter Jan. We will find the advocacy and the legal ways to put serial predators behind bars. He didn't have to: my mother let him take me. They had no idea about the abuse. The story is dramatized. Ive been doing, Hello, doctor with a couple of my friends for about 20 years. I about passed out. The film tells the story of Jan Broberg, who, as a child in the 1970s, was kidnapped twice and sexually abused by, Still, not everything that happened to Broberg and her family made it into the documentary. After earning the Broberg family's trust with his charismatic personality, Berchtold began grooming daughter Jan (Mckenna Grace and Hendrix Yancey in different time periods) in 1972, and. I'd been led up to that moment," Broberg said. Thank you for taking the time to have this conversation. Bob recalled saying to her, Dear, youll regret that decision someday., She stayed in Jackson Hole for two weeks, continuing the mission and living with Berchtold. "You have to think again how the grooming happens," Broberg explained. Mckenna Grace, 16, plays teenaged Jan Broberg opposite pedophile Robert Berchtold (Jake Lacy) in "A Friend of the Family" -- and said she wanted to "vomit from how gross it is." How is this possible? I never in a million years thought this guy was stupid enough to show his face [around me]. Youve revisited this chapter of your life before in your books, documentary, and speaking engagements. The movie includes pictures Berchtold took of Jan as a 12-year-old girl, all straw-colored hair, wide eyes, and freckles. The "alien" voice, which Bob pretended was coming from the car itself, said that I should be listening to Bob and doing as he told me. In particular, the fact that the Berchtolds and the Brobergs were all part of the same faith community seems to merit more analysis than it receives. When they showed up at the front door, my dad would stick his hand out and go, Hello, doctor. And then they would come in and he would give them the corsage that he had made for me, to give to them, so they could give it to me for free. The documentary only slightly went into "B's" past. Robert Berchtold passed away at age 69 years old on November 11, 2005. "Berchtold took her away in a motor home on the afternoon of Oct. 17, 1974," ABC News reported . So I felt like I was protecting her from being hurt, by allowing the abuse to happen. If they didnt, she said, then everyone would know about Bob and Roberts sexual exchange. As Jan Broberg later described in the documentary Abducted In Plaint Sight, Everyone had a best friend.. Watching Jake Lacy become Berchtold was seamless. The Broberg family met the Berchtold family through their church in a small town in Idaho in 1972, according to the documentary "Abducted in Plain Sight." Other revelations, though, come thick and fast. Theyre the bravest people I know, willing to try to help the rest of you see what they didn't. From then on, the abuse happened dailywhenever he had the chance. Broberg was missing for roughly a month during the first kidnapping, during which she was sexually assaulted by B. I kept it all to myself and kept going. By clicking Accept all you agree that Yahoo and our partners will process your personal information, and use technologies such as cookies, to display personalised ads and content, for ad and content measurement, audience insights, and product development. It's hard to say what impact the abuse had on my life. Instead, she blames small-town navet and meticulous grooming on the part . He'd told me that he had slept with her, that he had kidnapped her a couple of times, and that he loved her very much. Nonetheless Berchtold, even after his conviction and his briefest of interludes in prison, was able not only to be around children, but also to purchase and run a family-fun center as a business. He anesthetized her with sleeping pills and raped the girl up to maybe 200 times. Berchtold then fled with Jan to Mexico, where he married her and asked her parents permission to return to the United States and be legally wed under U.S. law. Hes so funny and kind and warm. Related: Dahmer Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story Sparked An Important True Crime Debate. Then, when I was 17-and-a-half, I dated a guy who wanted to have a relationship with me. the way she approached me and the way she smiled and the way she was like, Oh, can we hug? It was [like] watching myself. Let me inform you that Read More Robert Berchtold Wiki, Wife, Age, Family, Brother . It is made up of one wild story after another about 12-year-old Jan Broberg who went missing when a family friend, Robert "B" Berchtold, abducted her one sunny afternoon in 1974. Oh dear. Robert Berchtold was ultimately given a prison sentence, but rather than face life behind bars, he downed a bottle of heart medication with Kahla and milk and ended his life. Jans family waited several days before notifying the FBI, and even after doing so were reluctant to accept that Robert Berchtold had actually done anything wrong. Robert Berchtold's childhood The documentary only slightly went into "B's" past. She brought him to the house for dinner and he seemed nice enough. It did. When Jan Broberg shared the story of her stranger-than-fiction kidnapping in the 2017 documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, she did not anticipate the charged response it would elicit. Of course, my insecurities show, and my anger pops out. Around the same time, Berchtold went on a drive with Bob Broberg where he complained about his sex life with his wife and expressed that his needs werent being met. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Robert Berchtold. And then he had her wait outside while he abused me. Then he twisted that into, They want us to get married, and then everything will be okay. I was sitting on the couch, in my pajamas, flicking through Netflix and trying to find something to watch, when I came across the documentary Abducted in Plain Sight and the face of Robert Berchtold: the man who destroyed my childhood. 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