I was sitting on the couch, in my pajamas, flicking through Netflix and trying to find something to watch, when I came across the documentary Abducted in Plain Sight and the face of Robert Berchtold: the man who destroyed my childhood.
I was 9 years old when I first met Bob in 1978. Some people know him as Robert or "B," but he was Bob or Dad to me. He was a salesman and my mother had contacted him about purchasing a traveling franchise. She brought him to the house for dinner and he seemed nice enough. I was shy, so I didn't really speak to him a whole lot.
My mom was divorced, lonely and didn't want to be alone anymore. I don't believe she had a relationship with Bob but I think she really liked him and was hoping for more. Within a couple of months, we moved from our home in Texas to Salt Lake City, Utah, which was 45 minutes from where Bob lived.
We stayed in a hotel for a long time until she got an apartment, and within a few weeks of us moving there, Bob was coming by the apartment and having dinner with us. It didn't take long before Bob had his own key and could come and go as he pleased.
Before we moved to Salt Lake City, my mother had been so overprotective of me that I wasn't allowed to play in the front yard by myself. I didn't learn to swim because she was afraid I would drown. But now this man she didn't really know could let himself in at any time.
How the abuse began
About a month later, Bob took me to Ogden for the weekend to meet his five kids. But when we got to his apartment, his kids weren't there. So we went out to eat, he took me to a movie, we got some ice cream, then we went back to his empty apartment.
He said he wanted me to take a vitamin. I had never taken a vitamin before and honestly, I just couldn't swallow pills. But he kept pushing it until I finally explained to him that I couldn't swallow it, so he crushed it up and mixed it in some sugar and gave it to me. I don't remember much of that evening. I remember waking up in the morning and not feeling well at all. I was sick to my stomach and felt like throwing up.
Years later, Bob told me that he gave me the sleeping pill to physically manipulate me so he would be able to have intercourse with me without tearing. The next time I stayed at his apartment was the first time I didn't get my "vitamin," so I was conscious during the assault.
From then on, the abuse happened daily—whenever he had the chance. My mother worked two jobs, so there was a lot of time for that. He would pick me up from school and take me to his place, his motor home, our place or just in the car in the middle of nowhere.
I didn't know it was wrong right away. I just thought it was what you did. I remember there was another girl that he was "seeing" at the time. He took me by her house, picked her up and took us both to his motor home. He took her inside the motor home and abused her, while I waited outside. And then he had her wait outside while he abused me. I was 10 and she was 12. I guess, in your young head, you think, "This is just the way it is. There's somebody else who's doing it."
And the sad thing is, unfortunately, you're getting attention from somebody. I think that's the sick thing, when you come from a family that walks past and ignores you; it's attention, good or bad.
I was adopted. My mother had four biological sons and she wanted a girl, so she adopted me. I guess she wanted a little girl who she could dress up like a doll, but I was a tomboy. I wanted to play in the dirt and toss a football. So I didn't feel wanted. Her sons were quite a bit older than me—the youngest was seven or eight years older than me—and I don't remember them being in the house much. They had no idea about the abuse.
Robert Berchtold's methods of coercion
When I was 10, Bob tried to use the same alien story on me that he had used on Jan Broberg [an earlier victim who was abused by Robert Berchtold from 1972-1976. When Broberg was 12, Robert Berchtold kidnapped her and played a recording that told that she was half-alien, and that she had to have a baby with Berchtold by the time she was 16 to save the extra-terrestrial species].
We were in a car, and Bob pulled into a random neighborhood. He turned sideways and you could almost see him reaching back to start a tape recorder. The "alien" voice, which Bob pretended was coming from the car itself, said that I should be listening to Bob and doing as he told me.
But I could see Bob playing the tape, so I didn't believe him. I wanted to crawl into the backseat and find the tape recorder and Bob got upset with me. He would mention it every once in a while—that I was special—but he never mentioned that I needed to have a child to save some race or anything like that.
I didn't know the abuse was wrong until I was 12 or 13. I think I realized from the friends that I had at the time—you could just tell that their relationship with their father figures was different to mine. When I would ask Bob about these differences, including why I couldn't have friends over or spend time away from home, he would get angry.
In the beginning, he would say, "Do what you're told," and then, when I was 13, he said, "If it's not you, it's going to be somebody else." He said he would abuse his daughter, Jill, if I didn't comply. Jill and I were very close, we were like sisters. I would hang out with her, and her four siblings, most weekends. So I felt like I was protecting her from being hurt, by allowing the abuse to happen. In hindsight, I don't think Bob would ever have done anything to Jill. I think he just knew that I cared about her.
By the time I was 14 or 15, it got to the point where Bob would just take what he wanted—it didn't matter whether you were willing or not.
Reporting Robert Berchtold to the police
The abuse went on for seven-and-a-half years. Then, when I was 17-and-a-half, I dated a guy who wanted to have a relationship with me. He wanted to talk on the phone and to go out, and Bob didn't like it. He got very angry.
I finally told my mother about the abuse. The first thing she said was, "I suspected it." She had me stay the night with a friend and invited her friends over. I felt she had dismissed me.
I found my mother's cold reaction to be just what I expected from her. I felt she was unaffectionate as a parent: there were no hugs or "I love you"s when I was growing up. She never expressed any remorse for what happened, never apologized. But she called the police. I made statements and, because I was a minor, I didn't have to testify in court. I moved back to Texas to stay with one of my brothers, and my mother stayed in Utah.
I wasn't there for Bob's sentencing. It was only five or six years ago, when I found Jan Broberg's book about her ordeal and contacted her, that I found out he had only served a year in prison after being found guilty of the rape of a child. That was heartbreaking. I was hurt and angry that, after all of that, nothing had really happened to him.
Meeting Jan Broberg
I already knew of Jan, before I was an adult, because Bob had talked about her. He'd told me that he had slept with her, that he had kidnapped her a couple of times, and that he loved her very much. It was like he was talking about an ex-girlfriend.
I reached out to Jan after I came across her book, and we exchanged a few emails. We didn't meet in person until we filmed the documentary, A Friend of the Family: True Evil. Jan has since said that meeting me was "validating." I never felt like I needed to be validated.
I was interviewed for two days for the documentary—I spoke with Jan for hours and then the following day I spent hours being interviewed by the journalist. Yet only 10 minutes of my story made the documentary.
Jan has this very colorful story of what happened to her, and none of that happened to me. She was drugged on numerous occasions; I was only drugged once. Bob kidnapped Jan twice, whereas he never kidnapped me. He didn't have to: my mother let him take me.
The aftermath of the abuse
It's hard to say what impact the abuse had on my life. When I moved back to Texas, I got a job and I moved on. I did what I was supposed to do. I met my ex-husband and we had kids. I never saw a psychiatrist or a therapist. I kept it all to myself and kept going.
Of course, my insecurities show, and my anger pops out. I told my husband about what happened but he doesn't want to know the details. He doesn't want to think about it.
But I know the abuse impacted my relationships. My feelings get hurt easily and I have a hard time expressing myself without crying; I'd rather just shut down and stay out of the way. I'm insecure and don't feel like I deserve better.
I found out from Jan that Bob died by suicide in 2005. I feel that he cheated death, as he was never really held accountable for what he did. All he ever got was a slap on the wrist, and then he was able to continue as before. I can't imagine how many girls there were before Jan, between Jan and I, and how many came after me. There must have been a lot of girls. And so many adults knew, but nobody did anything.
Heidi Brewer, 52, is a bookkeeper for a construction company in Oklahoma.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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