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This is the most terrifying place I have ever been.
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Waking up after being drugged, restrained,
this was the torture chamber.
There must be a special place in hell for people
that hurt children.
They're gone.
We don't know where they are.
He's in the motor home on the run.
Yes, big story.
It was all in the paper every day.
You had intimate relations with Robert.
And your husband, your dad had intimate relations
with Robert. - Yep.
Yep.
It's insane.
That's what he was after, to blackmail my parents.
For him to know, gotta divide those two in order
to conquer my prey.
I was the prey.
There are people who are going to see this story
and want to shake you.
I feel so responsible for letting that man
in through our house.
She tells us this wild story.
She tells us all about the aliens.
My sister Karen would go blind.
My dad would be killed.
My sister Susan would be taken.
He was a master manipulator.
He was the master of disguise, of deception.
A perfect childhood, and then right here, it all changed.
You were nearly 2000 miles from home.
Yep.
Nobody had any idea that he was
terrorizing me in this room.
The same things that happened to me happened to her.
First time that I think she's really spoken publicly.
He said, don't tell.
This is our secret.
This is just for us.
Oh, that's creepy.
I can't go back there yet, though.
I have to give myself a second.
It was just-- it's heart wrenching.
She is an amazing woman.
This is the beginning of the journey to healing.
ANDREA CANNING This
is the strangest and darkest story I've ever covered.
It's about a woman named Jan Broberg.
She's a mother, a sister, and a daughter,
who can't escape her past.
Starting at the age of nine, Jan became the target
of a ruthless predator.
He abused her in her own childhood bedroom.
He kidnapped her not once, but twice,
taking her all over Idaho, California, and even Mexico.
He seduced her mother and her father
and tried to blackmail them.
It was all to get to Jan.
As a child, she was taken.
ANDREA CANNING : It went on for years.
Jan Broberg, a Pocatello girl
whose family says she was--
--kidnapped by a trusted family friend.
ANDREA CANNING But it's
almost inconceivable that Jan and her family survived it.
Jan is 60 now and still dealing with the aftermath
of these horrors.
So she's decided to revisit for the first time
all those places where her trauma happened
and to confront her demon one last time.
That demon's name was Robert Berchtold.
Everyone called him B. He called her Dolly.
ANDREA CANNING: Robert Berchtold
set his sights on you and really knew
exactly what he was doing.
He had a plan.
Definitely, I know that's true.
ANDREA CANNING: That's so horrible.
Yeah, it really is so hard to talk about almost
because, you know, you don't really
know how to have the words when you were that age.
I would call it icky or the icky stuff.
But I didn't really have the words or the strength, even,
to call it what it was.
You know?
You don't say, this grown man raped
my little 12-year-old prepubescent body, you know?
You don't say those words until you can.
Which took a long time to say that.
Took a long time.
ANDREA CANNING: You were robbed--
Yeah.
Yes.
--of a very important time in your life.
Yes.
It's like time stopped for you, almost.
It did, yeah.
I think I grew up in Camelot.
Pocatello was just a wonderful hometown.
It was so safe.
It was so happy.
It was ride your bikes down to the local grocery store,
buy some penny candy, and go to the park.
Nobody worried about where we were.
It was carefree.
And nobody locks their door.
And we talked at the dinner table every night.
Our family was--
Communicated.
We did.
We've always talked a lot.
Mm-hmm, yes, we have.
We may talk too much.
This was a tight family.
- Yes. - Exactly.
Very much.
We knew our neighbors.
We knew the extended neighbors at church.
And we were well cared for children,
who had lots of friends and were part of a community
that my parents lived in for years.
ANDREA CANNING : But everything changed.
In 1972, when Jan was nine, Robert Berchtold
bought the local furniture store
and moved into town with his wife, Gail,
and their five children.
The Brobergs met the Berchtolds at church,
and the two families hit it off immediately.
In those early years, everyone thought
B was the nicest guy in town.
People would say he would do anything for anybody.
Oh, my word, he is so nice.
And he was.
He would go over and fix the little ladies' toilet
or handle on their door.
Or I mean, he would do things for people all the time.
I mean, the neighbors loved him.
The congregation loved him.
The business community loved him.
We had pillow fights.
And he would jump on the trampoline with you.
And, you know, I mean, he was--
as a kid, he just was fun.
ANDREA CANNING : But looking back now,
Jan and her family say it's clear that Berchtold was
always plotting and scheming, even while appearing
to be generous.
Jan and I, we shared a room.
And he said Jan and Karen need to have their own rooms.
They're getting older, and they need that.
This room is so big.
We can divide this room.
I'll do it for you.
You know, and I remember it was a big project.
He brought us all hammers.
And we got to hammer down the wall and punch the wall out.
You know, he was the hero, building these bedrooms
for these two girls.
That's why this is so complicated
because it wasn't like Robert Berchtold went from 0 to 100.
No.
You know, this was a build.
It was a slow burn.
- To get Jan. - Yes.
To get you.
That's what he was after.
But the patience.
We did hundreds of activities with this family.
He always had something going on that allowed us
and all of the family to be together.
The things he would do with me would
be things like compliments.
Jan's such an amazing actress.
Or, oh, my word, I love what she sang, that sweet
song she sang in church.
He would do things to build up my confidence.
And he just knew how to make sure
that everybody felt that way.
Like, he would build every person up.
So he's building, building,
building, to the point where your parents
trust him explicitly.
Totally, and was having a special relationship
with each one of them.
He was becoming a best friend over here
and giving my mom compliments.
ANDREA CANNING : Being the predator he was,
Berchtold might have sensed Jan's mother, Mary Ann,
was particularly vulnerable.
And as a stay-at-home mom in a small community,
Mary Ann says she did feel sheltered and lonely.
He called me every day.
And I would listen to his lies.
And he'd flirt with me.
Oh, you're such a beautiful woman.
He just had a way about him that he
wanted you to feel good.
He just had a winning personality.
And I took to that.
He became someone that I had feelings for.
ANDREA CANNING : Once in those early days,
she even shared a secret kiss with Berchtold,
a seed he planted that would explode into a sordid affair
a few years later.
He was the master of disguise, of deception.
He was a master manipulator.
The predator isn't just grooming the child.
They're grooming everyone around that orbit
to trust them so that they might
gain access to the child.
ANDREA CANNING : What Berchtold told
convince Jan's father Bob to do was diabolical,
a seduction that Jan says would haunt
him until his death in 2018.
So now, Berchtold has made Dad--
you know, best friends.
They're super close friends.
So one night, Berchtold starts telling
Dad about my miserable marriage
and, like, I haven't been intimate with my wife
for over a year.
They were driving up in the mountains.
Yeah, they were just going on a ride.
And he said, Bob, I just really need some relief.
Berchtold called it kids' stuff.
He's like, oh, Bob, get over it.
It's just kid stuff, you know?
It's just-- please, just do it.
What did happen exactly?
My dad basically masturbated him.
Why would he do that?
like that.
Because his best friend is literally
begging him to do it.
And my dad did it,
and he never forgave himself.
You had intimate relations with Robert.
And your husband, your dad had intimate relations
with Robert. - Yep.
Yep.
It's insane.
All to get to her.
ANDREA CANNING : Jan vividly remembers
the first time Berchtold did something to her
that seemed inappropriate.
We had decided that all the kids were going
to sleep on the trampoline, all the Berchtold
kids and the Broberg girls.
We all have sleeping bags.
We all pile on the trampoline at their house.
It was late.
We were all asleep.
And I just remember waking up.
And I knew that something was wrong.
Like, it felt like my nightgown
was twisted around me.
And B was not in my sleeping bag,
but he was right next to me.
And so I'm upset.
I'm a little kid.
I'm like 10 or 11.
And so his wife, who was such a sweet,
wonderful, angel person, she just
took me right in her arms.
And Jannie, let me-- what's going on?
And she basically just looked at him, and she's like,
what happened?
He was like, I mean, I didn't do anything.
I don't know.
I mean, just was going to zip up her sleeping bag
and make sure she was warm.
Did Gail believe him?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, she believed him.
Again, so did I. So did all of us.
The degree to which Berchtold had a relationship
with both the father and the mother
and then used that to manipulate
them to gain access to Jan, it's
really quite an extreme case.
He was quite manipulative and pathological.
So I mean, it's not typical what we generally see
in childhood sexual abuse.
I think it's so important for us
to recognize that these are people in our communities.
This is not, you know, the stranger in the white van.
This is our uncle.
This is our priest.
This is our soccer coach.
This is somebody we know from church who
is our best family friend.
A friend of the family.
Absolutely.
ANDREA CANNING: Jan, we're going
to go to different locations of moments in
this awful history of yours.
Yeah.
The most important part of it for me,
personally, will be to go to places where
such unbelievable experiences happened
and be able to face them dead-on
as an adult, as the mama tiger, who takes care
of the little girl that's still in me, and can say,
I'm here.
We're going to do this together.
What is our first stop?
My childhood home.
ANDREA CANNING It's
been almost 20 years since Jan has been to her old home
in Pocatello, Idaho.
She sees the house as a place where her childhood
happy times were doomed to disappear
once Robert Berchtold crossed a threshold.
This is where the nightmare began.
This is where the nightmare began, yes.
Oh, wow.
Oh, this is different.
There's our fireplace.
That's the same.
This is where our big dining room table was.
And, you know, the piano sat here.
And so this is where Dad would sit and play the piano.
Mom would be on her guitar.
And the three of us, and my mom,
too, we all sang around the piano with my dad.
-Aw. -Yeah.
ANDREA CANNING: That's a great memory.
It's a great memory, actually.
OK.
Wow.
Is this the wall that Berchtold put right here?
Yes, this is the wall that he
built in the closet, uh-huh.
So he divided you and Karen.
Yep, he divided this great, big, huge room.
You know now why he put this wall in here.
Oh, yeah.
It was all in part of the plan.
So Mom and Dad are way on that end of the house.
Nobody's above this room, you know, sleeping or anything.
It's totally isolated.
ANDREA CANNING : Jan's isolation
was just the beginning.
Next, Berchtold concocted a bizarre story he presented
to her parents and unbelievably
used it to get himself into Jan's bedroom alone at night.
So after, gosh, B had been a part of our lives
for over two years, he confided in my parents
that he was seeing a therapist for depression.
And he said you have to have these tapes,
and you listen to them.
And you lay next to a child of the same sex as the person
that you first remember having the depression around.
That's what his therapist had told him.
And I said, he wants you to be with Jan when she's asleep
and have those tapes played?
I don't understand it.
And he talked to Bob, my husband, Bob, and said,
you've got to see if this will help.
I've got to get over this.
I've got to get back to my own life, my own family.
And we allowed him to do it.
He was, we thought, our best friend.
And he would never do anything to harm our child.
It wasn't like the door was shut.
He wasn't under the covers.
He was on top of the covers.
Mom was coming in through the door, putting laundry away.
Robert Berchtold was the ultimate wolf
in sheep's clothing.
Totally.
Around your parents and your family.
Yeah.
You'd have to imagine your brother being that predator.
And you would never see it coming.
It's just that deep.
ANDREA CANNING Finally,
after more than two years of charming and seducing
and grooming, the fateful moment arrived.
Berchtold told Jan's mother that he
had to deliver furniture near the ranch
where the families had gone horseback riding before.
Wouldn't that be a great opportunity
to take Jan riding again?
Call her naive or too trusting,
but Mary Ann said something she regrets to this day.
She said yes.
And off we went, October 17, 1974.
That day, everything changed.
What is our next stop on your journey?
We're headed to Massacre Rock.
ANDREA CANNING : It was October 17, 1974.
Jan Broberg had just turned 12, and she was excited.
Robert Berchtold had persuaded her mother to let her
go horseback riding with him.
My dad told him he couldn't do it, not on a school night.
And my mom was like, oh, I know, but you
know how persuasive he is.
Just let him take her.
They'll be home before dinner.
He promised.
They'll be home by 6 o'clock.
ANDREA CANNING : Jan loved Berchtold
like an uncle, and he had become one of her parents'
closest friends.
He'd spent more than two years winning them
over and building his trap.
And now he was about to reveal the monster
he had hidden so well.
As she got into Berchtold's car,
he gave her a sedative he said was an allergy pill.
She took it, and they took off, not to the ranch,
but to a desolate spot in the desert a half-hour
from Pocatello.
And that's the moment that my childhood ended.
ANDREA CANNING: This is the location
where he kidnapped you.
That's right.
That was the spot.
Everything changed at Massacre Rock.
ANDREA CANNING Jan
was unconscious when Berchtold pulled up to Massacre Rocks.
He carried her from his car into a motorhome
he had parked nearby.
I don't remember this place.
He had drugged me, given me an allergy pill.
I was so sleepy.
And I don't remember him taking me out of the car.
But now I can put a face on it.
Off you went--
Off we went.
--into the motor home, leaving,
essentially, no trace behind.
Yeah, nobody could know where we were.
And certainly, nobody was suspecting him at the time.
We loved this man.
When she didn't come home,
I remember my dad being very upset because he
didn't want her to go horseback riding,
and he told her no.
And he's like, we've got to find her.
Were you scared?
Yeah, I was scared because it just was so different.
I wasn't afraid that he would hurt Jan.
Nobody thought that.
He-- you know.
I mean, we trusted him.
And so you're not thinking kidnapping.
I mean, that just doesn't even really register.
MARY ANN BROBERG: I was frantic.
And I thought there's something going on.
I don't know what it is.
The next day, we had a call from the sheriff
in American Falls, who said we found this car,
and it had blood in it and on the windows.
And we found Jan's schoolbooks in here.
Oh, that's terrifying.
Did you think that Robert Berchtold
had had done anything to Jan or that they
were both in danger?
That they both were.
If something happened to her, of course,
it happened to him.
My sweet family that had to find that car with the blood
on it and all that didn't know if I was dead in the water,
alive.
It was just-- that's just really what is coming up
for me right here, like, what they felt, not
knowing where your child is.
The police find a lead.
Yeah, there's a broken window,
and there's blood.
But they said there was just one set of footprints,
so it looks like he had carried her.
There wasn't another person around.
They couldn't find any other.
So my mother called his wife.
And she said, oh, no, I saw him working on the motorhome
that's in the storage.
He has another vehicle.
So they went down and looked,
and it was missing.
The motorhome was missing.
What's the theory then?
Did they have one?
The theory is that he must have taken her.
I mean, the police is telling that to my parents.
And they're like, this isn't--
I mean, this can't be real.
And I said, I'm so angry and so--
feel so terribly stupid that I would let that man have
any time with my-- with Jan.
I called Gail, and she said, I don't know what to tell you,
Mary Ann.
She said, he has five children and me.
Why would he do something like that?
I don't believe that.
It was a difficult, difficult situation.
I didn't know how to feel, except sick.
KAREN BROBERG: My parents didn't
want it to hit the media.
They didn't want to hurt his family.
And Gail, his wife, begged them, please don't.
Please, please don't.
They're going to come back.
Please don't.
ANDREA CANNING : Police figured out
the crime scene was staged.
They realized this was a kidnapping.
And Robert Berchtold was now a 38-year-old fugitive racing
who knew where in a motorhome, the 12-year-old girl
as his prisoner.
I remember waking up, and I was in a dark room.
It felt like we were moving.
And I was restrained.
My wrists and ankles were both held by straps on the bed.
I was so scared, so terrified.
One of the worst parts about what
happened to you was that motorhome
that he kidnapped you in.
And you wanted to face that fear as well.
We can't get the old motorhome back,
but we found something that was really close.
Yeah, I think that's good.
I feel like I need to walk in there, facing that fear,
facing that terror, and being able to look
it right between the eyes and know that I'm in charge.
It'll be good.
Oh, do I really want to do this?
Oh, man, it's creepy.
What memories is this triggering for you?
Well, literally, after I had been
basically incarcerated in the back half,
there was like a partition.
And that's when I woke up.
That's where I was.
I was on the bed.
I can't go back there yet, though.
I'll just give myself a second.
OK.
Yeah, I think I can go back there.
I'm going to turn around.
I might freak out.
I'm not sure.
Oh, my gosh.
Oh, it's so similar with the curtains, you know?
And it was back there because I was literally like--
I was literally like on the bed, like, laying face up.
I'm just going to do it because you know what?
We're just going to be done with this.
We're going to literally--
and I could lift up my head enough,
but because my wrists are constrained,
my ankles are constrained.
ANDREA CANNING : When Jan woke up, strapped
to a bed in the back of the motorhome,
she heard a voice coming from a white box,
a strange voice, not quite human, not very friendly.
And it was giving her a message.
It is time for your mission to begin.
Like, those kind of phrases that it would
repeat over and over again.
What did the voice tell you the mission
was and your role in it?
So I was half from this planet, planet Earth, and
half from this alien planet.
And I was to have a child that would save this alien planet
from destruction.
Like, they needed their-- kind of, like, their savior.
And you had to have the child by 16, right?
Yes, by the age of 16.
It's amazing when you think back
to that moment when you woke up and just that fear
and that, like, wait, one minute, you're on your way
to go horseback riding, and the next, you
wake up in this bed, tied up with alien voices
in your head.
This literally-- this is the most terrifying place
I had ever been and I have ever been since,
was in this room.
This was the torture chamber.
I don't know why I want to cry, but at the same time,
I want to, like, scream.
It's like, somebody help me!
ANDREA CANNING : 12-year-old
Jan Broberg had woken up to an absolute horror.
She was shackled to a bed in a moving
motorhome with alien voices screeching
out of a nearby box.
Exhausted and scared, she kept drifting in and out of sleep.
The motorhome rolled on, and the voices droned on.
Then, on day three, she woke up,
and the shackles were gone.
The alien voices directed her to the front of the motorhome
where she found Robert Berchtold, who had
staged a terrifying scene.
He was laying on that couch covered in blood.
I thought he was dead, you know?
And I'm waking him up.
I'm literally shaking him.
Like, B, B, wake up.
Wake up.
We've been taken.
And this is the first time--
That I've seen him, that I know that somebody is here
that I know, that I love.
Oh, my gosh.
I thought he was also kidnapped.
ANDREA CANNING Berchtold
said the aliens had told him he was Jan's male companion.
And together, they would conceive the alien savior.
When she shrieked in horror, he assured
her he was horrified, too.
But the aliens told him if they didn't have the baby,
they would be vaporized.
Jan's family would be hurt.
If I didn't accept this mission
and follow their orders, my sister Karen would go blind.
My dad would be removed--
killed is what I assumed that meant.
And my youngest sister Susan would be chosen in my place.
Because he was so manipulative
and he intertwined himself within this story
of alien abduction and that he was abducted, too,
and the two of them had a mission,
she had no reason not to trust him.
The FBI come and join the team searching for Jan.
Yes.
Definitely.
Where do things go?
Nobody had any clue where he would have gone.
They thought maybe California.
And they all just started looking for a motorhome.
ANDREA CANNING The FBI
was searching for Berchtold and Jan
all over the United States.
But they were gone.
Five days after he abducted Jan,
Berchtold snuck her into Mexico.
He thought it would be better if--
to get us through the border, if I were a boy, not a girl.
And I just sat over on the copilot seat
and dressed up like a boy with a little ball
cap on the whole bit.
And they didn't have any questions.
Here we are in Mazatlan, Mexico.
You were nearly 2,000 miles from home.
This is the actual beach that he brought you to.
Right.
The motorhome was just parked about a block--
maybe a bit-- like a block away maybe?
It must have been just so strange as a child
to go from Idaho, and suddenly you're transported to Mexico.
Yes.
Transported is a good word.
I mean--
And I felt like I was already
in another world, another planet
because of the brainwashing.
And I'm just a kid.
You know, this was a playground.
And I think, in some ways, it's a very
romantic kind of place.
You know? I know.
It's so icky.
But it's right here, sitting on these rocks,
that he had that little ruby ring.
And he basically said, we're going to be married,
and here's the ring.
And now everything will be OK.
ANDREA CANNING: He's giving you,
like, an engagement ring.
Yeah, like a wedding ring.
You're an American bride in Mexico at 12 years old.
Right.
For all of us, hearing your story,
the most disturbing part of this
is that this is where he stole your innocence.
And while you would be a child here on the beach, you know,
by day, back in the motorhome, he was raping you.
Yes, exactly.
ANDREA CANNING : When I visited the motorhome
with Jan, she remembered how she had to mentally detach
herself from what Berchtold did to her
when they were in Mexico.
It didn't happen all at once, but, you know,
the beginning of all of that was here.
But it was like, in order to cope with that,
your brain literally has to go somewhere else when you're
this little tiny kid body, and you
don't know what's going on.
And you just are--
ooh, now the tears are just coming out
just because I'm angry, and I'm just sad for her,
that little girl.
And so I would look up through the-- see that little vent,
and you could see the leaves of the tree,
you know, usually, wherever we were parked.
And I would just count the leaves.
Because sexual abusers built this special relationship
with the child, the child kind of values the relationship,
and they don't want to lose it.
They don't like the sexual contact.
But at the same point, this relationship
becomes important to them.
ANDREA CANNING : Berchtold called his brother,
who told him the FBI was looking for him and Jan,
so he instructed his brother to deliver
a threat to Jan's parents.
Let him marry Jan, or they would never see her again.
Bob and Mary Ann refused.
I wanted to kill the man.
My husband said, calm down, Mary Ann.
And I said, I just feel like I can't--
I don't know what to do.
Bob said, we can't do anything.
Let's let law enforcement do their job
and see what they can find out.
There was so much stress and so much
trauma with my parents and his manipulation of them,
that they were not functioning.
It was all in the paper every day.
Big story all across Idaho and Utah.
It was terrible.
It was really terrible.
It was a very-- it was the most lonely I've ever felt.
ANDREA CANNING : But Berchtold's threat was
also the FBI's first lead.
So when Berchtold called his brother again--
--the FBI was tracing it.
He had to put more money in
because the payphone ran out.
OPERATOR : Please hang up now.
And the phone company could trace how much money it
was for that amount of time.
And so then they could draw a circle
around this is all the locations that would cost--
Cost that much money.
Cost that much, yes.
Could they pinpoint it to Mexico?
So they knew Mazatlan was one of those areas, yeah.
That's fascinating.
Yeah.
So they sent out a police to all those places,
and everybody looked and they said
there is a motorhome parked--
Well, yeah.
--with that description.
I remember it was really early in the morning.
I was still asleep.
And all of a sudden, there was this huge commotion,
this pounding on the door.
And the Mexican police just raided the motorhome.
All of a sudden, the door flies open.
And the Federales come in.
They grab them, put him in handcuffs.
They grab me, and then they just literally, like,
lift us both out of the--
Wow.
--motorhome into this small kind of little van.
That is terrifying.
It was terrifying.
And then, you know, a different language.
I don't know what they're saying,
but they're yelling and screaming at him.
And I'm frightened for him.
It's like, I feel like I should
be protecting him almost.
But I'm so scared.
Just big tears are just rolling down my face.
You leave the motorhome,
and you're in a police vehicle.
I'm in the front seat between two Federales,
and then Berchtold is in the back in the middle
between two more.
Did he try to communicate with you at all?
Yeah, actually, that's one of the creepiest
memories I have, was him looking
into the rearview mirror.
And he was looking straight at me.
His eyes were piercing, as if he
was trying to telepathically, like, communicate with me.
And they also had some twinge of fear, which was not
something I had ever seen.
And if you speak, then you're thinking--
I'll be vaporized.
I mean, I really look back at how
terrified the little Jan was, being
taken, going into a jail.
And when they took me inside--
So they put you--
In a room.
But it was a very small, like, a 6 by 6 foot room.
And I sat on a little chair.
That's all that was in the room.
And all of a sudden, someone's there and they're saying,
come on.
Get up.
And they take me down some stairs
into where there's a whole panel of cells.
And he's behind bars.
So they brought you to see him--
Right.
--while he's in the cell.
Yes.
And he had bribed the guard.
He'd given the guard one of his rings.
And so when I was there, he told me the things that I
could never talk about, or we'd be vaporized,
or Karen would be blind, or Susan would go missing.
The brainwashing continued even when he was behind bars.
Yes.
Yeah, in fact, it was such a scary place
to be in, it just seared--
it closed the deal, in a way.
What was it like for you
when you were reunited with Jan
after she had been in Mexico?
We were so happy to see her and to have her
in our arms and crying, all of us,
in a circle in the jailhouse.
We could walk out and be out there and free.
Did you ask her, did he sexually assault you?
No.
ANDREA CANNING: You didn't ask her?
Mm-mm.
Why not?
Probably wasn't in my brain to think that he
would ever do that to her.
ANDREA CANNING : She didn't ask her daughter
about it, but Mary Ann did ask a doctor to examine
Jan for signs of abuse.
And what did the doctor say?
He said he couldn't find any evidence.
I think one thing people will have
a hard time with is the fact that Jan's
mom seemed to not know that any sexual abuse had gone on.
Would you say that maybe there was a willful ignorance there
that she maybe didn't want to believe that this
had happened to Jan?
You know, it's hard to say.
I think she wouldn't want her child to be hurt in any way.
You know, we are looking at this with the knowledge
that we have today, and not with what was
going on back in the 1970s.
People didn't know that family members and friends were
really the sexual abusers.
It was only kind of in the mid '70s, early '80s
that even the FBI started to understand that there were
some perpetrators who used these types of what
they call luring behaviors.
ANDREA CANNING Robert
Berchtold was extradited from Mexico
and charged with kidnapping.
He claimed he had abducted Jan in the midst
of a mental breakdown, and that when he came
to his senses in Mexico, he heard
the FBI was looking for him, so he decided to stay put.
Jan helped his case by saying he had
never touched or harmed her.
Berchtold made bail and was ordered
to stay away from Jan, but he had
successfully brainwashed her.
And she believed the aliens would bring
them back together again.
I know it's not over, and I know they're watching me.
And I know that he's going to find a way so we can meet up.
And you were willing to do that?
And do his dirty work.
Oh, of course.
It's part of the mission.
I'm not pregnant yet with the alien baby.
ANDREA CANNING This headline
must have been a shock to anyone who opened the morning
paper on January 7, 1975, just a little more than a
month after Jan had been rescued in Mexico.
Why wouldn't Jan's parents want Robert Berchtold
prosecuted for kidnapping?
Because behind the scenes, through his lawyer,
Berchtold was threatening them.
He told Mary Ann and Bob Broberg they were guilty,
too.
Said they knew he had psychological problems,
yet they allowed him to get close to Jan
and even lie with her in her own bed.
He was putting us all into a situation
where we were the bad guys.
He wasn't.
ANDREA CANNING No one
knew about Bob Robert's secret,
that sexual encounter he had with Berchtold in the car.
Now Berchtold blackmailed Bob by threatening to reveal it.
Dad had told Mom not a lot about what had happened
with Berchtold in the car, but enough
that Mom was like, whatever happened with Berchtold
in the car, they're going to blab
that out to the whole world.
The attorney for Berchtold pretty much
threatened that you don't sign this paper,
we will go to court to find you an unfit parent
and have all your kids taken away from you.
ANDREA CANNING : And so Mary Ann and Bob
signed an affidavit that said Berchtold didn't abuse Jan
and incredibly asked that he not be prosecuted
for kidnapping her.
ANDREA CANNING: I don't know how
to say this in the nicest way, but there are people who
are going to see this story and want to shake you,
that what were you all thinking?
Come on, what is happening here?
That's right.
Can I say, too, the whole community loved this man
and were behind him?
They would say, you're not going to prosecute him.
He didn't hurt her, right?
He has a family.
He's got five children.
You can't do that.
So there was that pressure on my parents.
Plus even our own pressure not pressuring them,
but we loved that family.
We loved them.
OK, this is stranger than fiction.
Yeah, it is.
ANDREA CANNING Jan's parents
retracted their affidavit four days later,
but the damage was done.
Berchtold was convicted of kidnapping Jan,
but under a plea deal, spent just 15 days in jail.
He moved his family to Ogden, Utah.
And soon after, he and his wife divorced.
Then he began to terrorize Jan again in the one place
she should have been safe--
back in her childhood bedroom.
So now I've been home for a couple of months.
I'm down in my basement bedroom, fast asleep.
And crazy as this sounds, all of a sudden,
I wake up to the sound of the alien voices.
The little box was on my dresser.
You're thinking, this mission is still on.
Oh, gosh.
The mission is on, and I have to do
everything they tell me.
I don't want anything bad to happen to my family.
What are they saying?
You know, keep yourself prepared.
The male companion will-- you know.
And obviously, every single time the box
was talking to me, then within minutes,
he'd walk through the door.
And he would just be standing there.
And I always remember he had his socks on, but no shoes.
Berchtold, after the voices,
would come-- Oh, yeah.
--walk into your bedroom?
Oh, yeah, so the mission could continue.
So that he could literally rape me in this room.
How did he get in here?
I don't know if he
came through the back door.
I think he probably did that because I think
I would have woke up if he'd have come through either
of these windows.
ANDREA CANNING Berchtold
knew these secret nighttime visits were dangerous.
He was particularly worried he'd be caught by Bob
Broberg, now a sworn enemy.
Berchtold was sure Mary Ann still had feelings for him,
so he set out to seduce her and break up the marriage.
I mean, it seems to me that your husband was
on the right track here with saying,
you know, he's dead to us, essentially.
But not to you.
You were still willing to communicate.
You're right.
I was.
He called me every day to tell me he was so sorry.
ANDREA CANNING : Guided by her faith
and perhaps deluded by a naive trust,
Mary Ann wanted to forgive Berchtold.
She believed him when he claimed
that he had a mental breakdown and that he didn't abuse Jan,
even as he was continuing to rape
Jan right under her nose.
His wife called me often and said,
oh, I miss talking to you, and asked if I'd come down,
and I did.
And who was in the home?
Berchtold was there.
And I didn't expect to see him at all
because they had divorced.
But he was there.
And he said, oh, it's so good to see you again.
We need to talk.
And he said, I'm in love with you.
And I said, oh.
He said, you are.
You're the only woman I really think about anymore.
And he said, have you missed me?
And I said, yes.
He said, come over and see where I'm living.
And I went over to his motorhome.
And we sat there and laughed and talked about the past.
And that's-- it just went too far.
You ended up sleeping together?
Yes.
Mary Ann, so many people are going
to be wondering, after Jan was kidnapped,
how could you be intimate with Robert Berchtold?
How does that happen?
He said, Jan came back.
She hasn't talked about any of that?
And I said, no, she hasn't.
He said, because it never happened.
I didn't violate her.
He took your daughter, though.
Yes.
He took my daughter.
So how do you end up being intimate with him
after something like that?
Stupidity.
Being a stupid woman.
How did you feel the next morning after this
had happened between you two?
Like a bitch.
A dirty, lying, son of a bitch, my father
would have called me.
That's honesty.
And that's true.
I felt like I had just messed my whole life up.
In fact, I said, I'm going to the river
and drive my car into it.
After that, I just felt like I was trash.
ANDREA CANNING After Mary Ann
met with Berchtold several more times,
he called her husband Bob and told him
about their sexual encounters.
His plan worked.
Jan's parents separated.
I mean, we've talked about manipulation, but I mean,
this is like manipulation after manipulation
after manipulation.
And that's why we see it for what it was.
We see it for the master manipulator that
led our pure, beautiful, moral, religious, faithful,
absolutely wonderful parents down the road of hell.
ANDREA CANNING : But within a few weeks,
the Brobergs' faith in God and each other
brought them back together.
They were once again a united front, protecting Jan.
So Berchtold turned to a new tactic.
Jan was 14 now.
So by state law, if her parents
gave their permission, he could marry her.
He told Jan to get to work.
It's all about me pressuring my parents
to just let me marry him.
I'm in love with him.
I want you to let me marry him.
Your parents are obviously saying no--
Of course.
--to the marriage.
He's got a hold of you in some way
that we can't explain to you, but please know we will
never give you permission.
But he's not accepting that.
Oh, no.
He's just like, we're going to have to leave again.
Bob and Mary Ann are in the way.
We're going to have to figure out what the plan is.
I'm supposed to stage a fight with my parents
and just run away.
And the plan was that I would go out the window on my own,
and then I would walk up to the end of the street.
She came home and threw
a complete and total fit.
Stormed down the stairs, slammed
the door in her bedroom, wouldn't come out for dinner.
And the next morning, she was gone.
When you woke up and saw that she was gone--
I knew he was with her.
Really?
You just knew right away?
Yeah, for sure.
There was no surprise.
ANDREA CANNING The Brobergs
called the police, but as usual,
Berchtold was a step ahead.
During the night, he dropped Jan off
with a family he knew who believed
she was his daughter, then returned home immediately.
When investigators arrived to question him,
he said he had no idea where Jan was.
So they're like, he couldn't have kidnapped her.
He doesn't have her.
We know he doesn't have her.
ANDREA CANNING A week later,
when he was sure police had decided Jan was a runaway,
Berchtold picked her up and enrolled her
in a Catholic boarding school in Pasadena
under an assumed name.
She was Janice Tobler now, and B was her father.
Told the little sweet nuns
that we had escaped from Laos and that my mother
had been killed.
And so to please not ask me too many questions,
but just be really sweet to me.
And he's a big high-level government CIA agent,
and that people would come looking for me
because if they could get me and torture me, then, for
sure, he'd come to my rescue.
And that's how they'd find him.
Did the nuns believe him?
Oh, totally.
Oh, absolutely.
And as I'm going into the school,
coaching me that one of the aliens is is a nun.
We just don't know which one.
An alien nun?
Yes.
Did you feel like you had found her?
Oh, yeah, I knew--
Which one--
Oh, it was Sister Charlotte.
I was scared of her.
Why did she stick out?
She had these ginormous, big eyes
that looked like this crystal clear blue color
that I would think, oh, she's probably one of them.
So you're spending, what, Mondays--
Monday through Friday at boarding school?
Monday through Friday.
And it's a boarding school, so you're
living there the full time, but he
would come on the weekends.
And the weekends were full of two and three times a day
of him raping me.
You know, it was just getting worse and worse.
- Oh, that much? - Yeah, it was a lot.
ANDREA CANNING : Berchtold spent
weekdays at his own house.
ROBERT BERCHTOLD Hi.
MARY ANN BROBERG Hi, B.
ANDREA CANNING He would
call Mary Ann with what he said were messages from Jan.
He didn't know Mary Ann was recording
the calls, as he tried to lure her
into his plot to marry Jan.
ROBERT BERCHTOLD : She loves her sisters.
She loves you, and she'd like to come home.
She's not coming home to be a child anymore.
MARY ANN BROBERG She wants to be
a 18 or 20-year-old adult?
ROBERT BERCHTOLD : Oh, Christ, she is right now.
MARY ANN BROBERG Oh, she is not.
She's 14 years old.
My mom finally saw through him.
She was done being gullible.
She was done being passive at all
and hired a private detective.
And she even staked out B herself.
I was on fire to get rid of that man.
I guess, it's the inner self that
says, wake up and know this man is a criminal,
and he has your daughter.
There's no way I can leave.
And there's no way I would have tried.
But he senses how homesick I really am.
And he lets me call home.
JAN BROBERG Hello, Karen?
KAREN BROBERG Uh-huh.
JAN BROBERG This is Jan.
Jan?
I'm like, where are you? Where are you?
We need you. What are you doing?
Where are you?
I can't tell you, but I love you.
B is coaching me in my ear to make sure
that I'm saying, once my mom is on the phone, Mom,
you have to let me marry B. I'm never going to come
home until I can marry B. And she's like, well,
is he there?
No, he's not here.
I mean, he's standing right there.
BOB BROBERG : Have you talked to B?
JAN BROBERG
BOB BROBERG : Does he still want you
to marry him and all that?
JAN BROBERG
I really feel like what I was doing
was literally trying to make sense of the world I
had to live in.
So because I had to live in this world of being abused
and raped by this grown man continuously,
I have to let this be love, or I won't survive.
ANDREA CANNING : Investigators finally caught
Berchtold when they traced a call he made
from a Utah phone booth to Jan's
boarding school in Pasadena.
They came together on November 17, 1976.
I remember they called me out of class.
And there was this private investigator.
And he said, is your name Jan Broberg?
And I denied it.
I said no.
My name is Janice Tobler.
And then they're showing me pictures of my own family
and me in the middle.
Is this you?
And I'm like, no.
No, that isn't me.
She looks a lot like me, but it's not me.
And eventually, you know, of course, I had to say yes.
Jan eventually was brought home.
What was that reunion like seeing her--
Oh.
--this time around?
She literally walked in the back door,
closed the door behind her, and walked
straight down the stairs into her bedroom
and shut the door.
She didn't even say hello.
It was like my sister was a zombie, almost.
But she wasn't there anymore.
She was a whole shell.
It was so sad.
ANDREA CANNING Jan
was home, isolated and defeated,
but it would soon get worse.
All the crazy sordid secrets about Berchtold
and the aliens and sexual abuse that she'd been holding
inside for more than three years
were about to come pouring out.
So me and Caroline, her best friend,
decided we were going to repaint her room
and change everything so it didn't
feel like her old bedroom.
As we were doing this, we moved the pillows.
And I'm like, there's something crunchy in here.
And so I unzipped the pillows, and behind
the foam were these letters.
And I started reading them.
And I'm like, who is Zeda and Zethura?
So that was the day we confronted her.
And I was like, Jan, what's going on?
ANDREA CANNING : After investigators found
14-year-old Jan Broberg in the Pasadena boarding school
where Robert Berchtold had hidden her,
he was arrested again for kidnapping.
But once again, he slithered and slipped his way
through the justice system.
He spends no time in jail.
You know, he has psychiatrists and people that confirm
this guy is mentally ill.
And so he gets off on a charge of mental defect,
and he goes to the mental institution in Boise.
But he's out in three months.
ANDREA CANNING: So what happens?
Well, what starts happening, as I go back
to high school, you go out, you have your breaks,
and you're outside.
And I get calls over and somebody
would give me a note.
It would say, go to this phone booth.
At this time, whether it was the alien voice
on the other end or it was Berchtold,
it was somebody that was telling me what
I was supposed to do next.
You know, sneak out of the house
and go at this time of the night.
Go over to the mini dome parking lot.
I'll meet you there.
I mean, it's really detailed stuff.
So clandestine.
Oh, it's totally.
Top secret mission of--
Yeah.
--Robert Berchtold.
Exactly.
ANDREA CANNING : Berchtold lived in Salt Lake
City now, and Jan's parents were under the impression
he was out of her life.
They were wrong.
From time to time, Berchtold drove
his old motorhome 2 and 1/2 hours to Pocatello
to rape Jan yet again.
Then, just around the time
I was about to turn 16, I wasn't hearing from him.
And I was like, what's going on?
No more little notes from Zeda and Zethura,
nothing from him.
And I really just started to freak out.
You and Jan's best friend, Caroline,
found letters in her room that were pretty shocking.
Yes.
They were threatening letters, and I'm like,
who are these people?
Did you say, who's Zeda and Zethura?
Yes.
What did she say?
She went ballistic.
You can't know about that.
What are you talking about?
And we're talking,
and I'm trying not to cry because I don't want to be
vaporized, nor do I want Susan to be taken,
nor do I want my father to be dead, or my sister, Karen,
to be blind.
And then she got down on the floor,
and she started clawing at the carpet.
And I'm like, oh, my gosh.
It's a breakdown.
Right, and so she tells us this wild story.
She tells us all about the aliens.
And we go, OK, Jan, you got to let it out.
And we got all the details of them trying to have a baby.
And nothing happened.
I'm sitting there, and I'm 10 seconds into a thought.
Oh, my gosh.
Are they real?
Nothing happened.
Is it possible that this isn't true?
ANDREA CANNING : For the first time,
Jan was questioning the alien story
that had caused her to live in fear for four years.
She decided to find out if it was all a lie.
The aliens had also warned her not to talk to boys.
So she did.
The big test came in October.
So, again, this is almost exactly
the date when I was kidnapped the first time,
four years to the day is when the homecoming dance,
this dance is happening.
And I decide to say yes when I'm invited by a boy
to go to my first dance.
And I am shaking.
I am so scared.
I'm like, what if I go home, and it all is real,
and everybody's vaporized or whatever has happened?
But when I got home, get through the door,
start to walk down the hallway,
my dad goes, oh, Janny.
Oh, did you have a good time?
I was literally speechless.
He's not dead?
From this moment forward,
you started to heal?
Yep, this is the beginning of the journey to healing.
It was so scary when it finally came to that point,
and I had to go.
Now what do I do?
Now who am I?
I was like, do I have a purpose?
The real digging in for me didn't really happen
until I went away to college.
So that was kind of the beginning of my mom
and I literally talking.
Your mom slept with Robert Berchtold, the guy who--
You know, I was angry.
--ruined your life.
I remember just calling her at one point and just, yeah,
yelling at her, just laying it out.
Like, how could you have not seen through him?
Why did this continue to happen?
How could this have continued to happen?
Why would you have not protected me?
But to my mom's credit, she said
nothing to defend herself.
She just kept apologizing.
I'm so sorry.
ANDREA CANNING : And so, Jan set out to make
a new life for herself.
I remember when Austin was born,
thinking, OK, now this is my chance.
You know, my chance.
He's going to have the happiest childhood.
It's going to be perfect.
ANDREA CANNING But the pain
from all those years of abuse never left her.
It impacted every relationship she had.
And inevitably, that impacted her son.
There is so much change that happened from the time I was
born until I was 10, moving across the country,
different states, different guys, a lot
of marriages and divorces.
Obviously, the first one was with my actual dad.
The second marriage, I think I was seven.
The next one, I was like eight or nine.
The fourth marriage, my stepdad,
Larry, and he had four daughters
when they got married.
And, you know, like, that's all I ever really wanted,
was to have brothers and sisters, but--
Stable family.
Yeah, yeah.
It was the, here is the new family,
and then it gets taken away from me.
It makes me sad.
Like, I wanted that.
But I didn't know how to do it, not
for myself and not for him.
ANDREA CANNING Mary Ann
also struggled with the trauma Berchtold
inflicted on the family.
She tried to overcome it by writing
a book about it, which she self-published in 2003.
Her husband wasn't happy about that.
He didn't want to hear it.
He didn't want to go through it.
Why are you doing this?
And I said, I'm doing it because Jan asked me to.
And I said, and she needs to know all of it.
ANDREA CANNING : But Mary Ann herself
was still in the dark about what Berchtold
actually did to her daughter.
Jan had never revealed that he repeatedly
raped her as a child.
29 years later, she finally did.
ANDREA CANNING: How did you receive
this news when Jan finally starts to open up to you?
I felt responsible that I hadn't gotten this years
before and that I didn't understand
what she'd gone through.
So it took many years, and it hurts her, me.
She had to suffer with all of that for so long.
It is so important that a person
feels safe, safe enough to tell their story.
That's what I'd like to do today.
ANDREA CANNING Now
that Jan had found her voice, she wanted to do more.
She knew that telling her story would help others.
In March 2004, Jan gathered up the courage
to tell a group of university students
about her horrific experiences.
She hadn't seen or spoken to Berchtold in 25 years.
And this is when we found out that Berchtold was
actually living less than an hour
away from where I was giving this conference.
And he saw my picture on a poster
and literally started calling the university.
This woman's made up this story.
ROBERT BERCHTOLD : I think it's a pack of lies.
She brings in to hide the fact that Jan
went with me voluntarily.
They bring in aliens and mindwashing.
It wasn't true.
And he literally showed up in a van with a gun.
Drama occurred right here on the campus of Dixie
State College right in the middle
of the Women's Conference.
This man, Robert Berchtold, was arrested and charged
with simple assault, disorderly conduct,
and criminal trespassing.
ANDREA CANNING Berchtold
didn't get past security, but his sudden reappearance
in their lives rattled Jan and her family.
When he made bail, Jan filed to get a stalking injunction
against him.
So does everyone understand what
the procedure is going to be?
ANDREA CANNING Three weeks
later, on March 25, 2004, she finally
faced her abuser in court.
Now she was able to say all those things she didn't
know how to say as a child.
In 1974, at the age of 12, I weighed 68 pounds.
I was 4 and 1/2 feet tall.
I was abducted by Mr. Berchtold.
What was it like for you facing
Robert Berchtold in court, and you had to see him?
I was shaking.
I felt like I was 12.
I felt like I wanted to hide.
I did not act out of free will.
He kidnapped me.
He manipulated and brainwashed me.
And he sexually abused me.
I have a fixation for Jan.
I didn't know why, but I did.
And I wanted to be around her.
I haven't had any contact with her for 25 years purposely.
I've had no contact whatsoever.
I have with her parents because the book
that has been written is a bunch of lies.
Our life has been a living hell ever
since this book came out.
Mr. Berchtold, is there any questions
you'd like to ask Ms. Felt?
You know this is quite a story.
And you have sold a lot of books
because of this story, right?
He literally said to the judge,
you know, I guess it's her time
for her 15 minutes of fame.
And I remember just turning to him.
At that moment, mama tiger took over the little girl.
And I just pointed my finger at him, and I said--
My goal, Mr. Berchtold, is to educate the public
about predators like you.
That is my goal.
I cannot believe that you can look me in the eye.
You have no soul.
Jan, I'm sorry that you feel that way.
And I'd like to publicly apologize
to you for everything I have done to you.
I said, if you're really sorry for your crimes--
You should stand up, tell the truth,
and serve your time in jail, Mr. Berchtold.
ANDREA CANNING The judge
ruled that Berchtold had to stay
away from Jan and her family for the rest of his life.
But Jan wasn't done.
I am just curious, in your mind,
am I the only little child that you
ever sexually molested?
Yes.
ANDREA CANNING Finally,
Jan had trapped Berchtold.
She had recently discovered a police report
with his name on it, along with the name
of another little girl he'd abused.
So the little girl in 1986 that you spent a year
in prison for rape of a child, you're saying you
did not sexually abuse her?
She was 17 years old.
She was 10.
In the written police report, it
says she was 10 when the rape began, 17 when she reported.
ANDREA CANNING : Her name was Heidi.
She was the reason Berchtold had disappeared from Jan's
life before Jan turned 16.
Heidi has never spoken publicly about her experience
before, but when Jan reached out, she agreed to meet.
She was the little girl right after me.
She was the next one.
There's nobody else on the planet that
could understand, you know, what I
went through, except for her.
I am really anxious to meet her
and just look her in the eye and tell her I understand.
You file it away, and you keep
it down because it's just-- it's not part of everyday.
And you try to work through your emotions, but it's--
you just don't.
You don't have shirts printed up.
You know, you don't tote that flag.
You keep it to yourself.
How did this all start?
He was selling a travel agency, a franchise.
And Doris, my adopted mother, reached out to him.
She was interested.
Did she have some type of an instant connection with him?
Because he certainly ended up being a part of your lives
for a long time.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
He's good-looking.
He's personable.
He smiles and compliments and just wooed her.
She let him take me to meet his kids,
but his kids weren't there.
And we stayed the night.
He wanted me to take a vitamin.
And I didn't want to take a vitamin, and he kept pushing.
You need to take it.
How old are you?
It was a few months after I had turned 10.
And so once I explained to him that I just could not swallow
a pill, he crushed it up and put sugar in it,
so I took it and then woke up in the morning.
A few weeks later, we went to Ogden again.
And that's when I was--
he didn't drug me that time.
What did he say to you?
That this is what two people who love each other do.
Did you tell your mom?
Well, no, because he said don't tell.
This is our secret.
This is just for us.
Do you get to a point where you feel like you could tell
your mom what was happening?
I finally did.
I think I was about 17 and 1/2.
So this abuse had gone on for seven years?
Mm-hmm.
That's a long time.
What happens inside you?
How do you deal with that?
We have a joke in the family, you know,
that you're crazy as hanging out.
And so, you know, you let it run around the room
and scream and yell a little bit,
and then you chuck it back in your pocket
because, you know, you've got dinner to make
and laundry to do.
So you do cry.
You do let it out occasionally.
Mm-hmm, yeah, because you just feel like,
I guess, you weren't enough to be cared about or loved or--
yeah.
So, Mom, are you ready?
No, I am not ready.
OK.
Anxiety's a little high.
I haven't-- I've been just getting short
details about what happened.
I've never really had, like, a long discussion
about any of this.
I think you got this, mama.
Part of me just wants to turn around and run.
Oh, wow.
Hey.
Hi.
How are you?
Wow.
Do you wanna sit?
Yeah, right there.
How am I?
How are you?
This is a big deal, isn't it?
It is a big deal.
Wow.
You know, it's just been such a privilege,
I think, for me to be able to share my story.
And I want this to be so perfect for you.
I want you to feel completely loved and completely safe.
And he'd call me by my name, but he introduced me
as his daughter.
I mean, everybody knew him as Dad.
I mean, there was, I think, probably
a couple of years in school where I was Heidi Berchtold.
And your mom was fine with it.
I'm guessing she's thinking that, you know,
it's going to be a happy family.
Oh, we're going to be a happy family.
And no idea.
Mm, well, I think she had to have had an idea.
I remember arguments where she had asked him.
And of course, you know, he would say no,
and you're being crazy, but.
Wow.
So did he layer the abuse with, like, fun things
like he did with me?
Yeah.
I guess, I had to make him two different people for me.
Most of the time, he was dad.
And dad was great.
Dad loved me and, you know, complimented me
and did things with me.
You know, you crave it, as sick as it is.
I understand.
But that's dad.
Well, that's-- it's like a chore.
You got to take out the trash.
You got to wash the dishes.
Let's go have sex with Bob.
Yeah, it's like you're paying for it.
You're paying for the--
Attention.
Oh.
Mm-hmm.
He talked about you quite a bit in the beginning.
There was one time we were at his mother's house.
Had you ever been in that house?
No.
OK, one of the bedrooms was kind of like a library.
And the whole wall was full of books.
And he pulled this one book out.
And there was a blue ribbon in it.
And he said that it was yours.
That he had taken it from your hair. --
And inside this book was there were two pictures of you,
Polaroid pictures.
Oh, my gosh.
No explanation what-- who I was
or why he would show that to you?
Well, you didn't have any clothes on, so.
I didn't?
Mm-mm.
Was I asleep?
No.
I don't even remember that.
Wow, that is just so--
Mm-hmm.
Ugh, so awful.
I would imagine that would be scary enough, though, for you
not to ever tell anybody.
Well, yeah, because then you know that there was
girls that were before you.
And as far as you knew, nothing ever happened.
So there was no consequences to his actions.
Right.
So why say anything?
I mean, you not had anybody in your life to give you
emotional support, a lot of love, a lot of understanding,
a lot of, like, the things that I
think every survivor has to have for them to feel like--
I have the best kids.
Aw.
And they are just my light.
Oh, that makes me so happy.
They're all so wonderful and so strong and so loving
to me and themselves and each other.
Well, that's your support system right there.
Yep, my babies.
Yeah.
That's been the same for me.
It's been my son, who's been such a huge kind
of cheerleader and supporter.
And he's gone through a lot because of what happened.
The thing that I remember most was
when I was going through my third,
you know, breakdown of marriage.
And I have no job.
I have no money, nothing.
I'm bawling.
I'm just, like, crying to God or whatever
the greater being or power--
Somebody.
To somebody.
Somebody, listen.
Yeah, not in the grand scheme of things,
we don't matter.
That is wrong.
You matter.
How are we going to wake up the world
to the actual problem?
It is not a scary stranger.
Yeah, it's Uncle Bob.
How do we make it stop?
We have to talk about it.
It's just heartbreaking that nobody knew what to do.
We now, in hindsight, know that there
were several other young girls before me.
And there have been several other girls after me.
And who knows how many that we don't know about?
And that's the part that is just so sickening.
ANDREA CANNING : To Jan's family and others,
it had been an enduring outrage that Robert Berchtold
had spent a total of less than four months
behind bars for what he did to Jan.
But justice would finally come for him, though not
in the way anyone expected.
The district attorney called me,
and he said before this hits the news,
I want you to know what happened.
ANDREA CANNING : In November 2005,
Robert Berchtold went on trial for assault
and criminal trespassing the day of Jan's speech.
So now this man, because of this one incident,
nothing to do with raping little girls,
but because of this incident, he
literally was charged with two felonies
and two misdemeanors.
The clerk will now read the jury's verdict.
We, the jury duly impaneled in this case,
find the defendant, Robert Berchtold,
guilty of the offense of aggravated assault
by proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
ANDREA CANNING Finally,
at the age of 69 and more than 30 years after he first
abducted and sexually abused Jan,
Berchtold would face some serious time behind bars.
Justice, in a way, had been served.
But before he was sentenced, Berchtold
managed to escape even that.
After he was found guilty on all charges,
he left the courtroom, drives out into a campground,
and that's where he took the bottle of pills and died.
That day, when he died, there was overwhelming emotion
that went through my body, both in tears
and, like, relief and sort of this anger and rage.
Like, he never had to pay the price.
It was almost like a release of any love I had ever felt
for him and the anger I had ever felt because of him, any
harm he had done to my personal psychophysiological
self.
ANDREA CANNING : Robert Berchtold
was gone, unable to hurt anyone anymore.
But even today, years after his death,
the pain, trauma, and guilt he left in his wake linger.
Mary Ann, have you forgiven yourself?
Because, obviously, you carried
or are carrying some guilt.
Oh, yeah, I'll probably have the guilt to my death.
It's like my husband said.
And I feel the same way.
He said, I feel so responsible for letting
that man ever come in to our house or into our lives.
And--
Did he carry that to his death?
Oh, my husband, he did.
So maybe you should not carry this to your death.
Maybe you should give yourself a break.
Really?
How do you do it?
We all know who is to blame,
and it isn't you, Mom.
We literally not only have forgiven you,
but we want you to forgive you.
OK, I'll work on it.
Is it over, or is it never over?
I don't think it's ever over, but am I doing great?
Hell, yeah, I really am.
I feel like I've learned a lot.
I don't think it's over.
You know, I'm a work in progress.
So it's kind of a lifelong journey.
It is.
I would honestly say that everybody has a story.
And I feel like the greatest part of my healing journey
is starting my foundation.
That kind of thing is where the service to somebody else
to tell your story, and then, can I give you a safe space,
that's what it's about.
I think that to have shared in something
in some kind of trauma that way,
it either breaks apart a family,
or it brings them closer.
And luckily, we seem to band together
and have more of that kind of a relationship.
Berchtold took a lot from you,
but he didn't take your resolve.
He didn't take your love from each other.
He didn't take your family away.
I mean, you're not the losers here.
You won.
He lost.
How proud are all of you of Jan for how far she's
come, for what she conquered, for where she's at right now?
I think I'm proud.
Thanks.
I'm proud of all of you guys.
She is an amazing woman.
I think when I look at these hands
holding each other, it's a collective pride, right?
It's not-- it's Jan at the center, but it's all of you,
too.
I'm proud of all of my family.
It's not easy.
And it's really wonderful that they feel proud of me.
That makes me feel good.
Nobody's ever asked them in front of me.
It's really wonderful for me to feel like, oh, good,
they're proud of me.
I wanted that .