Sugar-coated by the warm glow of 70s small-town America, all candy colours and toothy grins, a new drama tells a grim true story that could not be any darker nor more twisted. And that contrast is exactly the point.
For this story of paedophilia, kidnap and grooming could never have happened if those involved had not been given a false sense of security by their perfect cookie-cutter lives.
A Friend of the Family, available to watch now, stars Colin Hanks, Jake Lacy and Anna Paquin, and is about Jan Broberg, now a 60-year-old actress and campaigner.
In the 70s, aged 12, Jan was groomed, kidnapped and abused by her charismatic neighbour Robert “B” Berchtold in the small Idaho town of Pocatello.
Horrifying enough. But there are plot twists within this grim tale that added to the compelling case for its retelling.
Not least that Jan was kidnapped not once, but twice, the second time two years later, by the same man. Then there’s the fact that her parents, Bob and Mary Ann, both had sexual relations with Berchtold, allowing this seemingly close family friend to distract, manipulate, and then blackmail them.
Most bizarrely, his manipulation of Jan involved convincing her to give in to his demands or face “vaporisation” by aliens.Jan, a producer on the series along with her mother, insists her naive, trusting family had no clue of Berchtold’s sinister intentions.
She says: “I don’t think they had any inkling at all. I mean literally, that was just not at all possible, because of the amount of love he had showered on the family.”
Despite the scrutiny speaking out has brought to her family, Jan persists to ensure no one else falls for such manipulation.
She said: “We know if people start talking about things that actually matter like this, it will make a difference. I want them to talk because, to me, that moves the needle closer to prevention.”
The Brobergs were Mormons – members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – Bob, a florist, and Mary Ann, a chorister in the church.
Jan has said: “We were a loving, trusting, educated family. We were not stupid or careless.”
Robert Berchtold, who owned a furniture store, his wife Gail and their five children, went to the same church and the families became friends in 1972.
Robert Berchtold became so involved in the Brobergs’ lives that he would regularly drive Jan and her younger sisters, Karen and Susan, to school. He would even sleep over. The girls adored him like a second dad. They also spent time at his home, baking and doing crafts with Gail.
The real recipe cards they made were used as props in the drama. Jan was singled out, but no one seemed to see, because while Berchtold was grooming her, he was also grooming her parents.
Bob Broberg, who died in 2018, admitted in the 2017 Netflix documentary Abducted in Plain Sight: “I never had an inkling that he had sexual designs on Jan.
“We weren’t really sure, even then, what a child molester was.” In the documentary, he also admitted for the first time that he had fallen under Berchtold’s spell and had even performed a sex act on him. Shame had clouded his judgement, and Jan has said that he never forgave himself.
She said: “That he carried that shame from being psychologically led down that road. He carried that through his whole life, and I tried many times to say, ‘Dad, Berchtold could make you feel like a 15-year-old’.”
When Berchtold first kidnapped Jan in October 1974, her parents had no suspicion that anything was wrong initially as he had told them he was taking her horse riding. In fact, he had drugged her and Jan woke up, restrained, in his motorhome in Mexico.
Jan said: “The day my entire childhood changed was when I woke up in the back of that motorhome with my wrists and ankles strapped to a bed.”
Eerie voices were being played from a cassette. They claimed to be aliens, Zeta and Zethra, and told Jan she was half-alien, and had been set a mission to have a baby before the age of 16 with a man in the next room.
If she didn’t she would be “instantly vaporised” and her little sister would be taken. She said: “I was more terrified of that voice and those messages coming from that voice, than probably anything else that happened to me.”
The Brobergs waited days to report their daughter’s disappearance, trusting her abuser. FBI agent Pete Welsh, who was on the case, labelled them “naïve”.
Jan was held for five weeks and when she and Berchtold were finally found he had married her in Mexico, where the age of consent was 12.
As, brainwashed, she swore nothing had happened, Berchtold blackmailed her father and the Brobergs signed affidavits claiming they believed Berchtold thought he had permission to take Jan.
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Incredibly, Berchtold was released and retained connections with the Brobergs, beginning an affair with Mary Ann that lasted eight months.
Jan remained under his spell, and two years after the first kidnap, she disappeared again. She left a note to say she was leaving, but, in fact, had been taken by Berchtold, who enrolled her in a Catholic school in California, pretending to be her father. The FBI detectives who had worked on the first kidnap case, traced him again to his motorhome, which was plastered in photos of Jan.
This time he was charged with first-degree kidnapping, but was sentenced to a few months in a psychiatric facility on mental health grounds.
Jan admits she was 16 before the power of his alien story began to break. Later, she would briefly blame her family.
She said: “Like, how come we don’t see this? What is wrong with all of us? Why are we so loving and trusting and nice?”
Eventually she let the blame go and went on to marry and have a son.
Much later in life, as she began to work as an activist, writing a memoir with her mother in 2003, Berchtold started to stalk her. She obtained a lifelong restraining order and faced him in court after he attacked one of her fellow activists.
Berchtold was set to serve a custodial sentence, but he committed suicide in 2005 before he was jailed.
Jan admitted her emotions were a mix of relief, anger and sadness.
She has now been telling her story for years, even although she knows that people will still be disbelieving...
How could what happened to her have been allowed to happen?
Her central point remains. She says: “The truth is that most predators are not strangers, but people we know.”
- A Friend of the Family is streaming on Peacock and NOW.
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