She was at the center of one of Netflix’s most shocking documentaries that told how she was abducted twice as a child by a predator who seduced both her parents.
Now Jan Broberg, 63, has opened up to Daily Mail about the recent death of her mother, Mary Ann Broberg, who came under fire for having an affair with her daughter’s abuser after the first abduction.
Mary Ann passed away peacefully in Santa Clara, Utah, on December 31 aged 87 after suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Jan was just 12 when she was first abducted and sexually abused by family friend Robert Berchtold, who was a married father-of-five, in the 1970s.
Her story was brought to life in the bombshell Netflix true-crime documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, released in 2017.
Berchtold manipulated and seduced both of Jan’s parents after meeting through their Mormon church in Pocatello, Idaho, and becoming their neighbor. He repeatedly drugged and raped Jan over four years starting in 1974.
The predator, nicknamed ‘B,’ had convinced her parents to allow him to regularly take Jan out and let him sleep in her bedroom several nights a week.
He claimed it was part of a therapy program to overcome the abuse he allegedly suffered as a child.
Jan’s mother Mary Ann engaged in an eight-month affair with Berchtold after her daughter’s first kidnapping
Robert ‘B’ Berchtold, a father-of-five himself, first met the family at their Mormon church and was instantly infatuated with Jan
A recent photo of Jan Broberg out for a walk, recording herself as she talked about her mom’s passing on New Year’s Eve
But he went on to kidnap Jan twice. First he smuggled her to Mexico where he convinced her she was part-alien and involved in a top-secret mission to save their galactic species in which he needed to get her pregnant before her 16th birthday.
Berchtold had slipped Jan a sleeping pill under the guise of allergy medication and she woke up with her wrists and ankles shackled in a motorhome and was introduced to Zeta and Zethra; alien voices dispatched through a small speaker near her makeshift bed.
Jan truly believed she had been abducted by aliens and the voices from the speaker threatened that her sister and father would be ‘vaporized’ if she did not complete ‘the mission’ and give birth.
She was found by her family and brought home but two years later she was kidnapped by Berchtold again and disappeared for 100 days.
Authorities tracked her down to a California Catholic girls’ school in Pasadena where Berchtold had enrolled her in.
The documentary detailed how Berchtold groomed the family and became very close to Mary Ann and her husband Robert.
Mary Ann had an eight-month affair with Berchtold after her daughter’s first kidnapping, while Robert, admitted to a sexual encounter with him in his car.
Many viewers questioned how Jan maintained a relationship with her parents after their actions and exposing her to Berchtold.
The Brobergs are pictured at Christmas after Jan (top right) returned home from Mexico after her first kidnapping
Berchtold continued to abuse Jan until she was 16 and later went on to rape and sexually assault a further four girls
But Jan told Daily Mail that blaming them for what happened is unfair and neither were ‘complicit’ in the abuse she suffered.
‘My mom faced so much criticism that was so misplaced… my parents did not know. My mother was manipulated by a master predator, and so was my father,’ she said.
‘They made mistakes like humans do, but it’s not the same thing. They did not know he was a monster.
‘He didn’t look like that. We met him at church with his wife and five kids. [We did] hundred of activities with them, you know, before the day he drugged me and put me in a motorhome and kidnapped me.’
Jan said she is tired of being asked how she can forgive her parents, because, in her view, there is nothing to forgive.
‘There wasn’t anything to forgive. I am tired of that question, but I guess it’s a good one so people can understand, the things they did right. I had 12 perfect childhood years, until the day I woke up in a motorhome.’
She told Daily Mail that she confronted her trauma head-on while in college, after being assigned to write about a hardship in her life.
‘When I would get to a place where I was crying, or upset, I’d just call my mom and dad, and ask them, why didn’t you know? Why didn’t you see it?
Jan Broberg and her mother Mary Ann smiling in a selfie posted back in September 2024
Jan says she doesn’t blame her mother Mary Ann for not seeing through Berchtold’s act
‘They were just so wonderful in how they responded. They never tried to defend themselves. They just said, “we wish we would have seen it, we didn’t know, we are so sorry.”‘
Jan had lived with her mom up until she died. She said she had admired her parents’ openness about their trauma to raise awareness of predators like Berchtold.
Mary Ann wrote a book titled ‘Stolen Innocence,’ which led to the jaw-dropping Netflix documentary and a nine-episode Peacock series called ‘A Friend Of The Family.’
‘She [Mary Ann] was such a force, she’s the reason why I have the things I have today. She wrote the book, and the book became the documentary, and then it became the nine-part series on Peacock,’ Jan said.
Jan also admired how Mary Ann went back to school to become a social worker and helped foster children find homes.
‘She didn’t just care, she actually changed things,’ Jan said of her mother. ‘She got her hands dirty.’
Her mother advocated for state funding so Idaho and Utah could be tied into the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
‘[Mary Ann] showed up in so many ways, she was a caregiver, it was always about everybody else.
Berchtold is pictured with Jan and Mary Ann during Christmas, before the kidnappings
Jan and Berchtold had an very close relationship. They are pictured water skiing together in 1973 before her first kidnapping
‘She needed so little of the spotlight, you know? She was grounded, loving and doing the work quietly from her typewriter.
‘My dad was the life of the party, the one that, you know, everybody wanted to talk to, made you feel so good.
‘My mother was the party. She was the doer, to make sure everything happened, and [to] have it be wonderful and fun for everybody.’
Jan set up a foundation to help other child sex abuse victims and also has a podcast where she speaks about dealing with trauma.
‘I‘ve had 250 of the most amazing podcast guests. They’re all survivors. Some have become therapists or doctors, they’re incredible, and that’s what I want to see change in.
‘Survivors really do access healing, and that through that healing, that cycle of abuse is interrupted. And I just hope I can do that through my foundation, the Jan Broberg Foundation.’
Jan plans to continue working on these projects and said she may dabble in acting again. She previously had parts in Iron Man 3, the 2012 movie Maniac and 2013 film Haunt.
‘My life has been taking care of my mom, and now I’ve got to get through this grieving process and this loss, because it’s huge,’ she said.
Jan Broberg now runs The Jan Broberg Foundation to support children who are survivors of sexual abuse
Berchtold avoided any major jail time for the kidnappings of Jan. In 1974 he was sentenced to five years for the first kidnapping but this was later reduced to 45 days. He then received credit for time served in Mexico so spent just 10 days in prison.
After the second kidnapping in 1976 he was arrested for a federal parole violation. He spent nearly six months in a psychiatric facility after pleading a mental defect to avoid longer prison time for kidnapping.
In 1986 Berchtold pleaded guilty to the rape of another girl in Salt Lake City, Utah and served a year in prison.
He died by suicide in November 2005 aged 69 in Bunkerville, Nevada as he was awaiting sentencing for assault and firearms charges stemming from an a violent altercation with members of Bikers Against Child Abuse at a public event where Jan was speaking. He had been found guilty of assault and simple trespassing.
He reportedly died by consuming a mixture of heart medication and alcohol to avoid returning to prison.
Jan’s father Robert died in November 2018 aged 80.
