The Brobergs were going to call the police until Gail Berchtold, Robert’s wife, asked them not to. The details that follow spiral quickly from strange to appalling. In October 1974, Berchtold offered to pick Jan up from her piano lesson and take her horseback riding. In one, her underwear is clearly visible. 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. 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.
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