Jan Broberg, the subject of the hit documentary Abducted In Plain Sight, has sat down for an interview about her experiences, and has taken the opportunity to defend her parents, saying that they were “naive” in trusting neighbour and close family friend Robert Berchtold.
Now aged 56, Broberg was first kidnapped by Berchtold at the age of 12. She says that he took her to Mexico, during which time she was drugged and sexually assaulted, while being told conspiracy theories about aliens. He later kidnapped her again at the age of 14.
Since the documentary was released on Netflix earlier this year, many have criticised Bob and Mary Ann Broberg for failing to protect their daughter. In her interview with Entertainment Tonight, Jan defended them, saying that they fell victim to Berchtold as well:
“My parents were groomed and manipulated for two and a half years … He was our best friend … So, the first thing I want to say is when you put it in context, two and a half years to build ultimate trust with individual members of a family is something that happens slowly, but it happens because you’re frequently with those people.”
Jan Broberg also claims that some aspects of the film are inaccurate – specifically, the assertion that her parents allowed her abuser to sleep with her on her bed while listening to tape recordings, as a way of dealing with his own childhood trauma. She said of these scenes:
“That is one part of the documentary that I want to be changed because he did not sleep inside of my bed. He laid on the top of my bed just like Mom, Dad, or anybody else … The door is open, my mom is doing laundry and she walks in the room and puts the clothes away in the drawers and out she goes and he’s laying there listening to these tapes while I’m asleep.”
Bob Broberg passed away last November, and Jan says that her father took the “guilt and shame” of what happened to the grave, but that both of her parents worked hard to make up for their mistakes in later years.
