Jan Broberg's parents and siblings, as well as the law enforcement professionals who worked on the case, recount the unbelievable sequence of events at the heart of this . He also ensnared her parents (Anna Paquin and Colin Hanks), seducing them too into relationships that would blur their vision and later be sources for blackmail. I never go anywhere [for a speaking engagement] where it didnt happen to somebody in that room or to somebody close to them in that room. He found me at college. 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. I kept it all to myself and kept going. "I had my moments of being angry and upset," Broberg says about resentment towards her parents. So that's why Im stepping into advocacy with the Jan Broberg Foundation. I mean, Ive been married and divorced a number of times. Berchtold didnt stop tracking you over the years. With her mother, she wrote a book, "Stolen Innocence," about her experiences. What was it like to film that? 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. I feel that he cheated death, as he was never really held accountable for what he did. Robert, his wife Gail Toyn Berchtold, and their children moved to Pocatello, Idaho, perhaps in the early 1970s, only to live next door to the equally religious Broberg family. It took Jan years to learn to cope with the damage Robert Berchtold inflicted on her. Ive met her and talked to her. How are you, Susan? 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. Berchtold and his family often had sleepovers with the Broberg children. 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. By 2003, Jan Broberg had tried her best to move on. But Jan became even more withdrawn, and all the while, she was still thinking about what would happen to her family when she failed to complete the mission.. Although he ruined Jans childhood, Berchtold never fully paid for his vile crimes against Jan Broberg in prison. B took a particular interest in 12-year-old Jan as well, often showering her with gifts and inviting her on trips. Its something that happened to them or someone close to themthey had been groomed or conned or manipulated, and could relate. About a month later, Bob took me to Ogden for the weekend to meet his five kids. 18 months later, while out on bail & awaiting trial for kidnapping, Robert Berchtold abducted Jan for the 2nd time, triggering FBI manhunt. In one, her underwear is clearly visible. Robert kidnapped Jan Broberg, who was only 12 years old girl. Jamie Lee Curtis Is Both Weepy and Giddy About Her First Oscar Nomination. In truth, Berchtold drugged the 12-year-old and staged the scene to make it seem as if the two of them had been captured and taken away against their will. The film implies that the Broberg parents were both brainwashed and manipulated by Berchtold, which accounts for some of their actions, but not nearly all. Jake Lacy Biography. It all started in 1972 when Berchtold met the Broberg family at a church service in Pocatello, Idaho, and quickly became an esteemed family friend. I don't remember much of that evening. (2001), Listen toVFsLittle Gold MenPodcast for Unrivaled Awards-Season Coverage, 2023 Cond Nast. Generally, I am pretty happy and pretty great about 90% of the time. Grace M. Galarraga is a writer based out of Southern California. I really did find a way to hang up that very heavy coat of abuse and have it be outside of me. [Berchtold] was [close to another family] when he died. Jannow Jan Broberg Felt, an actor whos appeared in Criminal Minds and Everwoodhas subsequently defended her mother and father. But . Robert Berchtold began taking the Broberg kids to school every day and took Jan on activities including horseriding and family vacations. Berchtold, it transpires, had repeatedly tried to infiltrate other families with young girls, and had been reprimanded by the high council in his church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, for doing so. Berchtold married Jan Broberg in Mazatln, and 35 days after the kidnapping, called his brother, Joe, asking him to contact Bob and Mary Ann to get their blessing to return home with Jan and be wed in the United States. I moved back to Texas to stay with one of my brothers, and my mother stayed in Utah. Jan was one of three daughters born to Bob Broberg, a florist, and Mary Ann. Robert Berchtold sexually abused Jan Broberg for several years and manipulated her and her family. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Before we moved to Salt Lake City, my mother had been so overprotective of me that I wasn't allowed to play in the front yard by myself. When Berchtold asked if he could share a bed with 12-year-old Jan as 'therapy' for overcoming his own childhood abuse, her parents were so brainwashed that they bizarrely let him. But when we got to his apartment, his kids weren't there. The new Peacock drama miniseries, A Friend Of The Family, tells the true story of how kidnapper Robert Berchtold ruined Jan Brobergs childhood. 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. Oh dear. Berchtold was born on February 7, 1936 in Tremonton, Utah. The drama series, A Friend of the Family, was released on Peacock, and many fans are talking about its true story. It was an interesting thing. It was so shockingly hard for me. Related: Dahmer Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story Sparked An Important True Crime Debate. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. 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. I wasnt prepared for people to blame my parents. Kerry Washington Goes for LaughsAnd TruthIn Hulu Comedy. Its a surreal experience. I had never taken a vitamin before and honestly, I just couldn't swallow pills. If they didnt, she said, then everyone would know about Bob and Roberts sexual exchange. Thats like looking at my brainwashed self again. The Corpsewood Manor Murders: A Story Of Satanism, Sex Parties, And Slaughter, Denver Man Convicted Of Gunning A Woman Down With An AK-47 Because Her Dog Pooped Outside His Home, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. He is survived by his wife, Deanna; sons, Jerry, James, Joseph, Hows your family?. She also reveals how she managed to shake Bs grooming, what happened to B in later years, and whether her family has heard from any of the other Berchtolds since. She was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by her neighbor and family friend Robert "B." Berchtold when she was 12 and again when she was 14. At least I can keep telling my story without feeling like hes going to show up or hes stalking me. Because hed showed up [occasionally]. Heidi Brewer on the documentary, A Friend of the Family: True Evil. He explained to Bob that he had a traumatic childhood, including having sex with an aunt when he was four. It wasnt about Mary Ann. He called me before it came on the news. According to Newsweek, Jan Broberg grew up to become an actress and an advocate for victims of childhood sexual abuse. Jan, Karen and Susan. In spite of the fact that Robert (or B) was born on February 7, 1936 close to Tremonton, Utah, he spent the majority of his childhood in the Mountain West region with his mother, several of his siblings, his stepfather, and his stepfather's biological father. But I didnt know what to do in my 20s and 30s and 40s. Vanity Fairs 2023 Hollywood Issue Welcomes You to the After-Party of Our Dreams, Inside the New Rights Next Frontier:The American West, The Strange, Sexually Charged Genesis of Gloria Swansons Legendary Memoir, The One Thingthe Royal Family Never Travels Without: Blood, NetflixsMurdaugh Murders Team Say Theyve Uncovered New Crimes, Trumps Relationship With Jared and Ivanka Is About to Get a Lot More Awkward, The Cringey Sexcapades of a Horny Billionaire, What Is Cinema? Not trying to sympathize with him, but just curious about his childhood. The real Bob Berchtold and Jan Broberg as a child. They didnt want to know. The district attorneywho had basically prosecuted his showing up at that conference with a gun as a registered sex offendercalled me. Jan Broberg: I was very involved. 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. We never called em pedophiles; Im sure it was in the dictionary someplace, Agent Welsh says. As far as the other scenes, I think I really have been able to [separate myself]. By the time I was 14 or 15, it got to the point where Bob would just take what he wantedit didn't matter whether you were willing or not. With her parents keeping her apart from Berchtold, she feared that she would have no way of completing the aliens mission. Almost a decade ago, the world was gripped with anxiety as it watched the legal proceedings against a young Se. Hes so funny and kind and warm. That was heartbreaking. They consulted with me constantly. 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. By the second kidnapping she had filed for a divorce, Broberg said. My sister Susan, who is an attorney, called his son Jimmy, an attorney. He convinced Bob and Mary Ann that his subsequent treatment by a psychologist involved spending multiple nights in bed with Jan. Neither one of us was comfortable with him doing it, Mary Ann says, but it was his therapy., The parental behavior that Mary Ann and Bob freely confess to in Abducted in Plain Sight is so bewilderingly naive that the more salacious and peculiar events Borgman goes on to lay out are almost hard to grasp. SANTA CLARA, Utah (ABC4 News) - Jan Broberg does not blame her parents for her abductions and rape at the hands of trusted family friend Robert Berchtold- even though many who watched the explosive documentary "Abducted in Plain Sight" on Netflix do blame them. He took us to science-fiction movies. A recording began to tell her the story of how she was half-alien, and the extra-terrestrial species' survival depended on her to procreate with the male companion of their choosing. 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 affidavits compromised the FBIs case against B. I didn't know the abuse was wrong until I was 12 or 13. That forever changed my DNA. Warning: Contains SPOILERS for A Friend of the Family. All but 45 days of his prison sentence were suspended, and B ended up only serving 10 days in prison. Im so glad youve found relief. October 5, 2022. The children in the clan considered Berchtold a second father, so much so that when he fled to Mexico with a 12-year-old Jan by his side in August 1974, the family was initially unwilling to. She was missing for several months, as he was able to trick her parents into believing that he wasn't aware of her whereabouts. But I didnt know what was missing in the conversation. But now this man she didn't really know could let himself in at any time. That companion was B, and the mission was to have a child with him before Broberg turned 16 years old. 2 . He wanted to talk on the phone and to go out, and Bob didn't like it. Robert Berchtold, a close friend of the Broberg family who has turned serial child abductor, kidnaps Jan Broberg, age twelve, in 1974. He served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Jan Broberg was kidnapped twice by her own neighbor and trusted family friend, Robert Berchtold. Bob and Mary Ann, Agent Welsh states, were told to cut off communication with the Berchtolds. Robert Hites Berchtold, 90, of Beaver Falls, formerly of New Brighton, died Thursday, September 10, 2020, in Providence Care Center. Watch it on Netflix. Average Age & Life Expectancy Robert E Berchtold lived 5 years shorter than the average Berchtold family member when he died at the age of 69. The abuse went on for seven-and-a-half years. 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. Robert Berchtold passed away at age 69 years old on November 11, 2005. I wanted to crawl into the backseat and find the tape recorder and Bob got upset with me. 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. And the sad thing is, unfortunately, you're getting attention from somebody. The first time Berchtold kidnapped Broberg, he took her to Mexico and married her. Theres a lot more to the story. When the BerchtoldsGail, Robert and their five childrenmoved next door, the husbands bonded over being business and family men (so Bob Broberg said), the wives naturally gravitated to each. I met my ex-husband and we had kids. . Thats not in the documentary, Broberg said. Its very close in every way to how it truthfully unfolded. Berchtolds wife, Gail, is often referenced in the beginning of. I wasn't there for Bob's sentencing. But six other women came forward with their own stories about Berchtold, and Jan Broberg filed a stalking injunction against him after he was arrested at one of her speaking engagements. It was really when I was 30 years old that I had that aha moment. He escaped jail time and moved to Utah to work for his brother. She divorced him and took her kids and moved., Gail was not featured in the documentary. She traveled to meet him, and he begged her to leave her husband and live with him. The Brobergs seemingly knew. Truth is, you don't really want to know what happens to Robert Berchtold after the events of the series. I think that's the sick thing, when you come from a family that walks past and ignores you; it's attention, good or bad. The twisted tale began in the early 70s in the small town of Pocatello, Idaho. This kidnapping lasted for approximately four months, until she was rescued again by the FBI. Ive been doing, Hello, doctor with a couple of my friends for about 20 years. I about passed out. For years, actress Jan Broberg kept the story of childhood sex abuse she endured at the hands of a family friend mostly private. Berchtold, a frequent visitor to the Broberg household, orchestrated these heinous acts. It wasnt until 30 years later, after Mary Ann had published her book Stolen Innocence: The Jan Broberg Story, that they heard from him again. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. 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. I was on set. But what kind of sexual abuse did he go through? I was working on myself. Directed by Skye Borgman, Abducted in Plain Sight begins in the early 1970s in Pocatello, Idaho. But Berchtold did not just kidnap Broberg oncehe entrapped Brobergs religious parents in such an elaborate web of trust and shame that he managed to convince the family to drop the most serious charges against him, continue letting him spend time with their young daughter, andin the most shocking twist of allkidnap her a second time when she was 14. A Friend of the Family, created by Nick Antosca, is based on the real-life case featured in the 2017 documentary Abducted in Plain Sight . I could look at the coat. I can't imagine how many girls there were before Jan, between Jan and I, and how many came after me. I got to have meetings with the art department, the costume departmentI went to the location of the home they found. Today there are specialists and programs designed specifically to deprogram people who have been brainwashed. He gave her allergy medication that knocked her out and drove with her to Pasadena, California where he enrolled her in a Catholic school with the alias Janis Tobler, feeding the nuns a fake story about being a CIA agent who needed someone to care for his daughter. But at the time, she said, they didnt suspect she had been kidnapped they thought she and Berchtold might have been in a car accident. She had that same kind of brightness. 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. How did you find out about his suicide? When I went to the premiere with my sisters and mother, they all got to meet Colin Hanks and spent some time with him, a little more than just a hello. B blackmailed Brobergs parents, Bob and Mary Ann, into signing affidavits claiming he had consent to bring their daughter to Mexico after the first kidnapping, according to the documentary. My mother worked two jobs, so there was a lot of time for that. The first abduction occurred when she was just 12 years old and the second, two years later, at the age of 14. 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 91-minute film, originally released in 2017, has captivated an entirely new audience since premiering on Netflix this month. Neither one of us were comfortable with him doing it, Mary Ann said, but it was part of his therapy.. 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. NetflixRobert Berchtold had an obsession with his 12-year-old neighbor Jan Broberg, even sleeping in the same bed as her four nights a week. Thats why Im so grateful to have this series. I'd been led up to that moment," Broberg said. On October 17th, 1974, 12 year old Jan Broberg was kidnapped by her next door neighbor & parents' best friend. Jan returned home, but only briefly. Then, on Christmas Eve, Gail Berchtold stopped by the Brobergs house and asked them to drop any charges against her husband, presenting them with affidavits to sign. I was making great strides in my life and my career and my familyall the things that I am so grateful for. In October 1974, Berchtold. Yes. The undeniably horrific saga of Jan Broberg's kidnapping at the hands of her neighbor Robert Berchtold not once but twice while she was 12 and 14, respectively, is honestly unlike any other. Although Bob and Mary Ann Broberg refused, Berchtold returned home with Jan and things somehow went back to normal without any charges pressed. He was a truck driver and served in the U.S. Army . I finally told my mother about the abuse. 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." He became a friend from a stranger and someone the family felt comfortable around. Berchtold continually raped Jan as he drove his motorhome to Mexico, where the minimum age requirement for marriage was only 12 years old. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Bob noticed that Berchtold had become sexually aroused. In January 1974, Robert Berchtold was rebuked by the LDS . 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