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Abducted in plain sight - Netflix - WTF?

56 replies

mrsm43s · 18/01/2019 13:39

I've just watched this and I'm actually speechless. The amount of times I had to pick my chin up off the floor! Mum shags daughters abuser, and Dad gives him "relief". And allowing him such access to their daughter even after he abducted her the first time! Then the brainwashing, the aliens?

I'm really struggling to take this at face value - no parents could possibly be that naive, surely? There's lots of different stuff at play - their religion, their manipulation, the social climate in the 1970s.

Without a shadow of a doubt, this child was failed by her parents. But were they duped, naive and manipulated, or was there more going on? Were they complicit?

I'd love to know what others think. This has been one of the most thought provoking docs I've watched since Dear Zachary.

OP posts:
StellaRockafella · 03/02/2019 12:40

I watched this last night and am still in a state of utter disbelief about it all. WTF doesn't even begin to cover it.
It was so shocking just how they all tried to normalise it all, from Jan believing herself to be in love with B obviously as a coping mechanism when it was going on, to the mother very obviously still being in love with him/still romanticised her relationship with B and still not accepting he'd used her to get to her daughter.
Their naivety is both shocking and heartbreaking.

papayasareyum · 03/02/2019 20:34

it shocked me that the siblings seemed most concerned with the way Jan's abuse had affected their parents! And the way the Mother's eyes were misting over when she spoke nostalgically about how much she wanted him and loved the attention. And how long did it take to call the police? And then they allowed him back into the house! And they all talk so warmly about their parents, including Jan. I think I'd have found it seriously hard to forgive them for their utter incompetence and stupidity.

CatsOnCatnip · 03/02/2019 20:56

I think there was a little more going on with the Dad and ‘B’ than just the wank in the car. For sure. They reeeeaaaallly didn’t want anyone finding out.

Ladybirdbookworm · 04/02/2019 00:55

Damn I had a whole post and I've lost it !!!
Anyway basically I felt as though in amongst all the undoubted weirdness and absolute incredulousness did anyone else think Jans Mother sounded as though she was acting when she spoke to B on the recorded telephone transcripts?
She just sounded as if she was going through the motions of expressing concern but didn't sound genuine

pineapplebryanbrown · 04/02/2019 01:03

I watched this with my adult DS. He especially was WTAF about the Dad agreeing to wank off B one lunchtime. What?!?!

Can you imagine turning to a chum and saying "would you mind?" It's mind boggling.

thaegumathteth · 04/02/2019 01:12

The whole thing was terrifying and just WTF but the mum and dad totally gave me the creeps. They just seemed to get off on it all and even now not realise that they completely and utterly fucked up.

jay55 · 04/02/2019 16:20

Funny isn't it, even with today's knowledge of grooming, and knowing abusers groom whole families, I still can't imagine how on earth the parents got themselves in so deep with the guy.

Undercovermuvver · 06/02/2019 00:47

Thank you. I don’t visit here much but I wanted it confirmed. Fucking shit parents.

placemats · 07/02/2019 19:26

I think this is a more balanced and nuanced report on this programme.

The perpetrator was the man who abducted the 12 year old. He blackmailed the parents. He thankfully is no longer alive. He tricked at least 6 other families. He tricked the nuns. He was a paedophile.

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/06/he-was-a-master-manipulator-abducted-in-plain-sight-and-the-truth-about-abuse

BartonHollow · 07/02/2019 20:14

Whilst it's true that Berchtold is a manipulator, perpetrator and paedophile. That's about 50% of how he got away with it, the other 50% is the outright negligence of the parents, the facts about their reactions speak for themselves.

Fraying · 08/02/2019 18:22

did anyone else think Jans Mother sounded as though she was acting when she spoke to B on the recorded telephone transcripts?
yy but I thought that was because they knew their phone was tapped and so they were trying to keep B on the phone and get more information out of him by pretending they believed what he was saying.

Snowmaggedon · 08/02/2019 22:11

Astonishing but I can't help think of m Jackson too and all those parents duped...

The convos the mum Had with him during the second abduction got me.. Casually chatting with him and whether he had chatted to her!

Astounding...

DulciUke · 08/02/2019 22:21

WTF is the only way that you can react to this documentary. And as far as people being unaware of grooming in the 1970s, that didn't automatically mean that they were naive. My mom (who was raising me in the 1970s) would have been on red alert if a male neighbor had started playing and interacting with me that way. The parents were criminally stupid and should have had all of their kids taken away from them as they obviously didn't have the mental capacity to keep them from harm. A neighbor drives your young daughter off and doesn't return for days and you don't consider calling the police? WTF!!

calpop · 08/02/2019 22:43

what i find even more astounding is the mother was allowed to go onto to be a social worker, working for the state, taking children i to care.

Snowmaggedon · 09/02/2019 16:46

I didn't trust the mum at all

brainache78 · 10/02/2019 10:13

Another part that stood out for me was the way the mother talked about all the things 'B' was that her poor husband wasn't! All misty eyed and nostalgic.

The man repeatedly RAPED your fucking daughter!

JustDanceAddict · 10/02/2019 16:13

Insane.

The mum had sex with him multiple times after the first abduction. Wtaf?

As for the dad wanking off Berchtold, that is also bonkers. Who would actually do that - surely he’d run a mile, esp in that decade. Obv was a ruse to out him as gay if needed, but how did B know the dad was going to perform the act?

I can’t believe that people were that naive in the 70s. I was a child then and certainly had my wits about me where creepy men were concerned. Maybe it’s more about their being Mormons and just not believing that paedophiles existed so not ‘getting’ what Berchtold was doing.

The mum was def in love with him.

qazxc · 10/02/2019 20:38

I was seriously wondering about the parents from the beginning.
Even if you were naive enough to think that the new neighbour paying a lot of attention to only one daughter, when they didn't come back from the "horse riding", you'd ring the police in case they'd been in an accident and needed search and rescue.
I think that there was more than the one wank with the dad, B says affair. Also how is it normal that if a neighbour says "oh I'm feeling a bit frustrated, fancy giving me a hand job" you would just do it?

youngestisapsycho · 11/02/2019 11:40

I found it all a bit far fetched to be honest.... I turned off halway thru after realising that I didn't really care what happened to any of them!

BlueCornishPixie · 11/02/2019 23:08

I just watched this! Glad other people felt the same.

The whole documentary is like gaslighting! It's the parents presenting catastrophic failures on their part as perfectly normal "oh silly us". They completely and utterly failed their daughter, they let him abuse her, yet I was left wondering if I was being unfair to the parents!

The mum on the phone, to a man who has a)abducted her daughter twice b) had an affair with her husband c) whom she has had an affair with, and she's like "oh bee do you still want to marry my 14 yr old daughter' like wtaf! And they all seemed to completely forget about the first abduction attempt. (That's assuming she didn't know about the rape)

I found the parents tale of events really hard to believe, I find it impossible to believe they had no idea what was going on. Its like they've convinced the daughter that they were just manipulated and naive and shes pretending that they did nothing wrong to protect herself. He asked to sleep in their daughters bed!

And the mother visited an attorney to work out that to save her marriage she had to stop having an affair? She spoke about him so fondly, there was no anger in her voice about a man who had raped and abducted her daughter. None of them seemed to have any real anger towards him (excluding Jan in any of this). It was the level of anger you might direct towards a boyfriend who smoked or drove a motorbike, like a slight disapproval but very little anger.

NKFell · 12/02/2019 14:25

When the Dad said he got him off in the car, WTF?!

Then Mother had an affair with him AFTER he married her child in Mexico.

Not to mention the not calling the police, letting him share a bed with a child bloody hell, BLOODY HELL.

MsTSwift · 12/02/2019 21:26

The tapes! When the mother is told her dd is a child prostitute and the mum tuts and says “oh dear” like you do when a cake sinks or something. The mother is complicit the father so weak.

Derpess · 13/02/2019 22:25

Just watched like this 😱.

notacooldad · 18/02/2019 16:03

This sums up how I felt after viewing!

Abducted in plain sight - Netflix - WTF?
girraffeduck · 19/02/2019 03:38

I think people have no idea what it's like to be in a cult - which they were, admittedly a big one. It is mad - but when you consider what their belief system already was - it's not so shocking for the time period it was in. First time I watched it I did think wtaf but the more I've considered it it seems less strange actually.

Disclaimer: grew up in a cult myself although not this one