BOISE, Idaho — “She was a beautiful little girl – very bright and very lively.”
It’s the chilling sentence that starts off a popular Netflix documentary called “Abducted in Plain Sight.”
Since its recent release on Netflix, the documentary has gotten a lot of national attention. It has left many online viewers saying they were stunned by the continuous twists in the story.
The documentary centers around Jan Broberg and her family, who lived in Pocatello in the 1970s. It tells the story of how the Brobergs' close family friend and neighbor, Robert Berchtold, developed a fascination with then 12-year-old Jan Broberg.
Berchtold got close to Jan and developed an inappropriate relationship with her. In the documentary, Jan’s parents, Bob and Mary Ann Broberg, reflect back on how naïve they were to trust Berchtold and allow him to spend so much time with Jan.
Berchtold would eventually kidnap Jan twice, sexually assault her and brainwash her about what happened to her.
Cathie Clarke, who now lives in Boise, grew up in the same neighborhood as the Brobergs and Berchtold. She was close friends with the Broberg family and knew them well, even babysitting for them on occasion.
Clarke said she also knew Berchtold and remembers when he and his family first moved into the neighborhood.
She recalled the one and only time she was at the Berchtold family’s home when she was 13 years old.
“I babysat for them – once,” Clarke said. “He came home while I was there and said, ‘You don’t need to go home. Just stay.’ And he had me there for about an hour and then said I could go home.”
So she did. And when her father asked how babysitting was, Clarke told him what happened.
“And he said, ‘You know, you’re never allowed to go back babysitting there,’” she recalled. “And he explained he just felt that was very inappropriate and he wasn’t okay with that.”
In the documentary, Clarke’s father was interviewed and talked about a time their family and the Berchtold family went water skiing. Berchtold had invited Jan along as well.
He has since passed away, but in the documentary her father states, “That’s the last time I will do anything with the Berchtolds, I have no use for that.’”
Clarke added that she remembers driving home and her father talking about how much attention Berchtold gave Jan and how angry it made him.
Clarke said Berchtold was always looking for any excuse at all to be around her family or the Brobergs – to be around the girls, especially Jan.
She said she remembers a time when Berchtold took it upon himself to come trim the family’s crab apple trees. Her father came home and told Berchtold they didn’t need his help and not to come back.
“He just kind of always had a feeling that something wasn’t right,” Clarke said.
She said because of that, her father quickly made sure to cut all ties between her family and Berchtold.
The Brobergs say in the documentary that they did not do the same – they were too close of friends with Berchtold.
Since the documentary’s release, many viewers have questioned Bob and Mary Ann Broberg about how they could have allowed Jan’s situation to happen.
“I think shame on anybody that says, ‘This could never happen to me,’ ” Clarke said. “Because every one of us are vulnerable at different times in our lives and I think we don’t know what was really going on there.”
Clarke said there’s no question the Brobergs made colossal mistakes but she said she believes they were just naïve and that different life experiences contributed to how they looked at the world – and at Berchtold.
“I think sometimes when you are just good and pure, you can’t imagine that kind of ugliness in somebody else and that’s honestly what I think happened there,” Clarke said.
She said mistakes aside, the Brobergs are, and always have been, good people. She said they were always well-loved by the community too. Clarke said it’s hard for her to see how the family has been treated since the documentary came out.
“I am sad at how ugly people have become toward Mary Ann,” she said. “Bob passed away a couple of months ago and just to see the horrible, horrible, truly terrible things people put on her Facebook - I think, ‘What good will that do?’”
“I’ve watched them pay every day of their lives since this went on,” Clarke continued. “They have paid and paid and paid. They allowed themselves to go before the public and go to a very humbling and humiliating point in their life to tell truth and I feel like they did that for Jan to say, ‘We love you and we are so sorry that this happened.’”
Cathie has kept in touch with the Brobergs and said Bob Broberg died recently but Mary Ann still gets a lot of terrible messages sent to her.
Clarke said all three daughters have grown up to be amazing women and the whole family has always remained close with each other.
“They are educated, good women,” she said. “Their parents did a good job.”
She said she’s proud of the Brobergs for being willing to come forward and tell their story and she hopes people will take away an educational message from it, rather than just criticism.
“Don’t trust just anybody,” she said. “That you make sure your relationships with each other are strong and good. This man was very, very smart. He saw the weaknesses and then he came in and he used those weaknesses to use them to get what he wanted.”
Before the documentary was made, in 2003, Mary Ann Broberg wrote a book about the family’s experience. It’s called “Stolen Innocence: The Jan Broberg Story.”
Clarke said writing and publishing that book nearly bankrupt the Brobergs but they felt it was important to start getting their story out there.
Jan Broberg has since become a Hollywood actress and is also a motivational speaker against sexual assault and sexual violence.
Berchtold never served any time in jail for kidnapping or abusing Jan. He was instead sentenced to time in a mental facility, where he was released in less than six months.
Around the same time period and just around the corner from the neighborhood where Cathie’s family and the Broberg family both lived are the Idaho State University dorms, where well-known serial killer Ted Bundy kidnapped his only confirmed Idaho victim.