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By Kelly Wynne
Culture Writer
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Most Abducted In Plain Sight viewers were quickly frustrated by sexual abuse and kidnapping survivor, Jan Broberg's parents. Broberg, however, said they were victims, too. Her parents, Mary Ann and Bob Broberg, let Broberg's captor, Robert Berchtold, have nearly unlimited access to their daughter. He slept in her bed, where he molested her. He kidnapped her, took her to Mexico and married her, where marriage was legal at a young age. And they never pressed charges.
While the documentary frustrated many viewers, Broberg is confident in saying her parents were also taken advantage of. She spoke of the "grooming" techniques Berchtold used to get closer to Broberg through her family in an interview with Vulture published Friday.
"Grooming is a very interesting subject that I think many people do not understand," Broberg explained. "When you're in it, when it's happening to you, you don't know it. It happens slowly all the time. I don't feel like people really understand how it happens and they just blame my parents. The reality is that my parents were victims too, and this man was just a master manipulator."
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In order to get closer to Broberg, Berchtold seduced both of her parents. Mary Ann had an ongoing affair with her daughter's kidnapper, and he even asked her to leave her husband to be with him. Berchtold also entered a brief sexual relationship with Bob, which he used to manipulate the family. They did not press charges after Berchtold first kidnapped Broberg in order to keep her father's relations with Berchtold a secret.
Broberg found out about her mother and father's sexual relationships with Broberg when she was older. "There were just so many things that that I wanted to know. 'What were you guys doing? What was happening here at home?' We would have these long conversations and that's when my mom explained what happened with her," Broberg explained. "With my dad, it took longer. I didn't know really anything and neither did my mom, other than my dad had said he did something terrible that he would regret for the rest of his life, but he didn't want to tell her what it was. He felt so ashamed and terrible about it, so he really did not tell any of the details about what happened that day in that car until years later."
Broberg's father spoke of his sexual interactions with Berchtold in Abducted In Plain Sight, but the details are not shared in Broberg's book Stolen Innocence.
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