<p>As a child, Jan Broberg was kidnapped <em>twice</em> by a family friend. Now the woman at the center of the Netflix documentary reveals how she found the strength to survive&mdash;and forgive</p>

- Steve Helling And Laura Barcella

To the three close-knit Broberg sisters, neighbor Robert Berchtold was like a second father. The outgoing family man sometimes picked the girls up from school and even joined them in jumping on their trampoline or playing games like hide-and-seek and capture the flag in their Pocatello, Idaho, neighborhood. “We were so close,” remembers Jan, “that my parents would have signed the papers to have him raise us.” But on a sunny morning in October 1974, as a then 12-year-old Jan departed with Berchtold, 38, for a daylong horseback-riding adventure, she was thrown into a years-long cycle of torturous abuse. While she doesn’t remember everything that happened on that fateful trip, she recalls waking up strapped to a bed in Berchtold’s motor home as it sped toward Mexico, where he would sexually assault and then legally marry her—leaving a vulnerable Jan confused about her own feelings toward her kidnapper. “He was a master manipulator,” says Jan, now 56. “He groomed every person in my family.”

Now, 45 years later, Jan’s shocking story is reaching millions in Netflix’s documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, raising questions about how Berchtold was able to cast such a spell on the Broberg family that he could abduct and abuse Jan so easily—and repeatedly. Even Jan’s first kidnapping didn’t dim the family’s allegiance to Berchtold: They resumed contact with him after he served a 10-day jail sentence. Two years later, when Jan vanished, he told her parents she was i

Esta historia es de la edición May 13, 2019 de People.

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