Jan Broberg Found Revisiting Locations of Abuse for Documentary 'Healing'

As a young girl, Jan Broberg was terrorized by predator Robert Berchtold, a family friend who groomed, sexually abused, and kidnapped her twice in the 1970s.

Decades later, Broberg told Newsweek what it was like to face this head-on in the new documentary A Friend of the Family: True Evil. In it, Broberg revisits many of the locations where she had been abused by Berchtold, including her childhood bedroom, all of which helped her "healing" process.

Jan Broberg Found Revisiting Locations of Abuse for Documentary 'Healing'

In A Friend of the Family: True Evil, Broberg spoke with Andrea Canning about her abuse at Berchtold's hands while standing in some of the places where the traumatic experiences took place.

Though it was difficult, Broberg told Newsweek that she felt it was a "great experience" because of the way in which Canning and the documentary team were keen to help her with "moving the story forward."

"For me, telling my story was always about trying to help other people and to be able to bring them into their own voice and their own healing," Broberg said. "And so, for me, being able to be around this really amazing group of professionals, who did the documentary, and Andrea Canning, who helped all throughout the piece, was just very healing. They were very nurturing.

"I got to face some of my fears head-on, but not by myself, with a very supportive group of people who were there to give me that experience. It ended up really reframing a lot of my experiences in a very positive way."

In the documentary, Broberg is taken to an RV that was recreated to look like the one where she was first kidnapped and abused in by Berchtold in 1972 at the age of 12.

At the time, Broberg woke up in the motorhome tied to a bed with a speaker beside her, telling her that aliens needed her to complete a mission: have a child by age 16 with a 'male companion,' or her family would die and her younger sister would be taken in her place.

The male companion, she later learned, was Berchtold, who went on to sexually abuse her under the pretense of it being for this 'mission.'

Broberg explained that at the time she had an "out-of-body experience" in the motorhome where she focused on the trees beyond the air vent in the RV's roof so that she did not think of what Berchtold was doing.

In the documentary, she confronted that trauma.

"To really come to grips with how this really happened and the anger that I experienced towards this adult man that would do this to a little girl who genuinely loved him was significant," Broberg said of how she felt. "And then just the loss, [I was] grieving the loss of my innocence and my childhood because I had such a wonderful childhood up until the point I woke up in that motorhome, strapped to that bed with that voice playing in my ears.

"Everything changed from my safe, happy, carefree childhood in a home where I was completely loved and felt completely safe, to a place of complete terror. So, for me, to face that singular experience of when and where that happy childhood was taken away from me was very significant in my [life]."

Broberg describes how sexual abuse can be seen as a scratch on a vinyl record, and that a survivor of abuse needs to try and "get really good at moving your needle past the scratch" in order to "find the help that you need."

"Facing all of those psychological and physical traumas that live in me, I was able to spit them out in a way that was releasing a lifetime of hurt, of being hurt by someone that I trusted, that I loved like my favorite uncle," Broberg added. "The whole idea that he was planning this kind of a crime—crimes against my parents and against me—just made me really angry and very deeply sad, but to be in that spot I was able to let that go.

"To let it go in a different way than I've ever done before, again moving my trauma past the scratch that is sexual child abuse, which is a deep, deep scratch."

On Helping Other Survivors of Abuse

The Peacock documentary is the second that Broberg and her family have made to help tell their story—the first of which was Netflix's Abducted in Plain Sight released in 2017.

Reflecting on revisiting her story in the new documentary, Broberg said: "There was an element of: 'Why did this happen? How can I have peace when the perpetrator only continued to assault and abuse other young girls?' And how do you find a place of healing in the scariest places of your memories?

"And what I discovered was that the adult me was able to talk to, in theory, little me, and tell her: 'It's okay, I really have you. I got you, your beautiful heart is still your own. Your capacity to care for other people and for yourself is really all there.' And that was how I took that fear and I was able to take it on as the adult Jan.

"[I was] able to help repair all those hurt and sad, lonely and disappointed, scared feelings of little Jan [...] it was amazing, actually."

The documentary ends with Broberg and her sisters Karen and Susan telling their mother Mary Ann that they wanted her to forgive herself for what happened with Berchtold, and that she shouldn't blame herself for being manipulated by him and not realizing he was abusing her daughter.

Broberg called the moment a "cathartic" experience, saying that her reason for making the new documentary as well as the drama A Friend of the Family was to try and stop the public from blaming her parents for Berchtold's actions.

"We were all affected by this trauma, but we don't blame her or Dad. We deeply respect and love our parents. That's why I'm so grateful we got to do this documentary and this series to clear up all the misconceptions. People immediately wanted to blame our parents," Broberg said. "That's another key point that I try and make everywhere I go: there is one perpetrator who committed these crimes that's to blame.

"Everybody else is unaware. They only know what they know. You can't blame people for what they don't know or what they don't see. You could try to educate and raise awareness and make people more aware and hope that they will see something that you didn't. But you can't blame people for what they don't know and what they don't see.

"So that was really important for us, to be there together to have that cathartic moment with our mother. She has told me since: 'I actually feel lighter and better, I really am okay. What you all said really has made a difference.'

"That's the whole point of telling our story. We all decided as a family we would tell the story, we would be transparent, we would be exposed, we would take all of the criticism if it could help one child, one family member, either prevent this, or heal from it, or raise the awareness."

A Friend of the Family: True Evil is out on Peacock now. The drama A Friend of the Family is also available on the streaming platform.

Anyone seeking help should call the National Domestic Violence Hotline, a free and confidential hotline available 24/7 that can be reached at 1-800-799-7233 or TTY 1-800-787-3224. The hotline also provides information on local resources. For more information visit https://www.thehotline.org/.