![]() But as a parent, watching Abducted in Plain Sight makes me feel justified in being sometimes overprotective of my kid. This man was a legitimate family friend who they naturally trusted. ![]() I don't see the point in condemning the parents in Abducted in Plain Sight. Maybe it’s because of that experience that I’m so leery of adults around my son, but it does point to the fact that there are predators anywhere you look. We didn't have the same kind of relationship with him as Broberg’s family had with Berchtold in the documentary, but our landlord wasn't a stranger and we all trusted him. Because he was there all of the time and our family knew him. I trusted him too because he was familiar and he didn't scream “stranger danger.” So when he asked me to sit on his lap most afternoons, I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. The elderly landlord often sat outside of his own apartment on a porch that wrapped around the entire building, and, I’m sure, my mom thought nothing of the “nice old man” enjoying the sunshine while kids ran around playing. Because of that, I preferred to play outside of our housing complex whenever possible rather than stay inside. My mom had a regular stream of boyfriends who would come in and out of our lives and they were never the most reputable men. More so, I know them as a sometimes volatile pair when my mom wasn't entertaining a new guy. My parents were divorced before I was born, so I never knew them as a steady couple. Perhaps this story resonates particularly strongly with me because of my own experiences. It’s about how scary it is to imagine that someone close to you could be the abductor. ![]() Abducted in Plain Sight isn't just about how scary child abduction is. And he could have easily been my friend or my husband's friend, someone I could have known for years before my kid was even born. He was like a genuine member of the family. But to the Brogers, Berchtold wasn't a stranger. Since then, parents have become a lot more wary of strangers and the danger they might pose to children. Maybe that’s because we as a society are much more aware about these things than Broberg’s parents were when the crimes took place in the ‘70s. There’s no reasonable explanation I can think of that would lead me to allow someone who isn't myself or my husband to sleep in my child's bed, regardless of his age or connection to the family. The documentary sends an important message to parents about trust and boundaries. In Abducted in Plain Sight, Broberg alleged that during her first kidnapping, Berchtold did molest her repeatedly and went on to sleep in her bed in her family home as a form of "therapy." This is a man who was so close to the Broberg family that they trusted him to sleep in their preteen daughter’s bed. Acquaintance kidnappings generally have the largest number of female victims and in most cases, these kidnappings involve some kind of sexual assault. Twenty-three percent were kidnappings by strangers and 49 percent were made up of family kidnappings. The idea that someone already in his life, in my life, could take advantage of him and our family, makes me sick.Īccording to the FBI’s 2017 National Crime Information Center Missing Persons File, 27 percent of the recorded kidnappings of children under the age of 18 that year were considered kidnappings by an acquaintance. As a parent, the thought of my son being taken by a stranger keeps me awake at night. If you haven't watched the documentary yet, it gets even more outrageous than that.īut the big takeaway here is that, as the title of the film suggests, Broberg was taken from her family in broad daylight and with no struggle because she knew and trusted the man who took her. He allegedly used his personal charm to relate to almost every member of Broberg’s family, including her parents, who both admitted in the documentary to having romantic relations with him. They explain that Broberg’s accused abductor, Robert Berchtold, and his own family had grown close to Broberg, her sisters, and her parents in the years leading up to her kidnapping. In the documentary, Jan Broberg and her family describe her abduction at the age of 12 by a close family friend and the years of manipulation and brainwashing that both lead up to and followed the crime. Not just because it tells the story of a frightening child abduction and details the horror the family went through, but because of how it happened. You’ve probably thanked the party gods that you never got sucked into Fyre Festival when it happened, and had a good time sleeping with the lights on after watching The Ted Bundy Tapes, but Abducted in Plain Sight is the Netflix documentary all parents need to watch. It is arguably the golden age of documentaries and true crime miniseries to both entertain and scare the hell out of everyone.
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