![]() ![]() The movie includes pictures Berchtold took of Jan as a 12-year-old girl, all straw-colored hair, wide eyes, and freckles. “He was like a second father to me,” Jan explains, before detailing her memories of how he drugged and molested her. After becoming fast friends with a new family called the Berchtolds, the Brobergs noticed that the charismatic “fun dad” Robert Berchtold (known as “B”) seemed overly interested in Jan. Jan was one of three daughters born to Bob Broberg, a florist, and Mary Ann. The result is a documentary that exposes them for public scrutiny without pausing to really interrogate their actions.ĭirected by Skye Borgman, Abducted in Plain Sight begins in the early 1970s in Pocatello, Idaho. And the Broberg family, confessional to a fault, are primed more for honesty than for self-inspection. It unpacks too many bizarre events in a short time frame to allow for much additional analysis. 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. That is the only reason we told our story. They’re the bravest people I know, willing to try to help the rest of you see what they didn't. It happened to my whole family, this man was a master and my parents saved my life. Manipulation and grooming are not understood by so many. Jan-now Jan Broberg Felt, an actor who’s appeared in Criminal Minds and Everwood-has subsequently defended her mother and father. Much of the outrage targets Jan’s parents, who participated fully in the documentary, and whose behavior in response to Berchtold’s prolonged abuse of their daughter strikes many viewers as shockingly inadequate at best. Over the past week, viral tweets and Reddit threads and various expressions of incomprehension have batted around the internet, as viewers try to make sense of what exactly they’ve just watched. Now I won’t be able to sleep.”Ībducted in Plain Sight was first released as a documentary in 2017 with the title Forever ‘B,’ but it’s gained rather more traction this month after being added to Netflix’s true-crime library. “Oh my goodness,” Mary Ann replies, in a steady, even tone, as if he’s just told her that seasonal allergies might be worse than usual this summer, or that two people brought potato salads to the potluck. ![]() That friend, Robert Berchtold, calls Jan’s mother, Mary Ann, and falsely tells her that Jan is prostituting herself and selling drugs. The cautionary tale Broberg tells about kidnapping today, is that "it's somebody you know, love, and trust, and probably somebody your child knows, loves, and trusts."Įvery episode of ABC's award-winning talk show "The View" is now available as a podcast! Listen and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, Stitcheror the ABC News app.One of the scenes in Abducted in Plain Sight that best encapsulates the strangeness of its story comes midway through, after the second time a teenager named Jan Broberg has been kidnapped by a close family friend. "It's the smokescreen that a master manipulator creates," Broberg warned. They didn't find out about the “alien mission” B convinced their daughter of until 1978 after she turned 16. 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 daughter’s abductor. "But I knew they had been groomed and manipulated too." "I had my moments of being angry and upset," Broberg says about resentment towards her parents. Through therapy, she learned to forgive them for not stopping the years of abuse she endured from B. ![]() Today, Jan Broberg has a "wonderful relationship" with her parents. "It happens before the actual incident occurs." "You have to think again how the grooming happens," Broberg explained. 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. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |