Abducted in Plain Sight, originally titled Forever B, is a 2017 true crime documentary directed by Skye Borgman, running 91 minutes. It premiered at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival and spent two years on the festival circuit before Netflix acquired it in 2019, at which point it became one of the most talked-about documentaries of the year. It tells the story of Jan Broberg, who was abducted twice as a child by Robert "B" Berchtold, a neighbour and close friend of her family, in Pocatello, Idaho, during the 1970s. Jan, her parents Bob and Mary Ann, her sisters, Berchtold's brother, and the lead FBI agent on the case all participate.

I want to be precise about my reaction, because it is unusual. This is the angriest I have ever been while watching something, and for once that anger has nothing to do with the quality of what I was watching. Borgman's film is well constructed, carefully paced, and genuinely thoughtful. My fury was directed entirely at the decisions made by the adults inside it.

Because the phrase that kept running through my head was that they let this happen. And I use "let" deliberately. The Brobergs did not simply fail to notice a predator. They welcomed him into their home and granted him near-total access to their children. At one point Berchtold was sleeping in twelve-year-old Jan's bed, four nights a week, for six months, an arrangement presented to the family as a form of therapy, and one they accepted. Even accounting for the era, even accounting for the closeness of a small church community, it is almost impossible to watch that stretch of the film without shouting at the screen.

And then the revelations begin, and the film simply does not stop delivering them. It has the rhythm of that clip of Peter Griffin falling down the stairs, where every time you think it must finally be over, another one lands. Berchtold drugs Jan and plays her recordings of voices claiming to be aliens, telling her she is half human and half alien, that she has been chosen, and that she must conceive a child before her sixteenth birthday or her father will be killed, one sister will go blind and the other will be taken away. He positions himself in the room as a fellow captive, apparently beaten and terrified, convincing her they are bound together in a mission neither of them can refuse. It is a masterclass in psychological control, and it worked on her for years afterwards.

And then, incredibly, he takes her again. In 1976, aged fourteen, Jan is abducted a second time by the same man. The Brobergs did not initially suspect him.