‘Abducted in Plain Sight’ in Netflix tells the story of Jan Broberg who was kidnapped by a family friend in the 1970s. Jan, her family and law enforcement who worked on the case recount the sequence of events that have shocked the world.
Netflix have recently released the documentary which was released in 2017. It documents the events of an unbelievable kidnapping and the manipulation of parents. Viewers are calling it the “wildest” and “most messed up” documentary they have watched and uncomfortable to watch. It is 90 minutes and takes you back step by step to show the case.
In the 1970s the Broberg family became close to Robert ‘B’ Berchtold and his family after meeting them in Church. For over two years Berchtold manipulated and gained the family’s trust so he could plan the abduction and abuse of their 12-year-old daughter.
During the manipulation, Berchtold became extremely close with the family and groomed the parents as well as their daughter. Berchtold had an affair with both of Jan’s parents, not at the same time. In the documentary Jan’s mum says: “He gave me a great feeling about myself. I was attracted to him”.
In the lead up to her abduction of Jan, he convinced her parents to let him sleep in her bed as part of his ‘therapy’ he was receiving after suffering abuse as a child.
On 17th October 1974 Berchtold abducted Jan for the first time, she was told she was going horse riding, so she was given an ‘allergy pill’.
She explained: “He handed me my allergy pill because I was going to be around horses. After I took the pill, I woke up in the back of a moving motor home and my arms and my legs were strapped to the back of the bed.
“I was drugged. I was in and out of very, very deep sleep. For the next five weeks I was missing. This is when the sexual abuse began.”
Berchtold had Jan believing she was an alien and needed to conceive a child with him by her 16th birthday or bad things will happen to her. Jan was found with Berchtold by Mexican police and he was jailed for a short amount of time. Her parents did not press charges.
It was not long until Berchtold abducted Jan again (1976) and secretly enrolled her in a Catholic girls’ school in California. He would visit her on weekends and pretend to be her father. She was missing for over 100 days this time. Once she was found she was sent home and Berchtold was arrested and put on trial for kidnapping, he was sentenced to 45 days in jail. He was then released but given a restraining order.
In 2004 a book was released by the family and there was a talk were Jan would be a speaker. Berchtold turned up with a gun breaking his restraining order. Berchtold died in 2005.
Since the case, Jan and her mother have spoken at many events to raise awareness of sexual abuse and the cycle that can surround it. It was found that six other women had contacted her saying they were a victim of abuse by Berchtold as a child.
Lewis Walker
