The Jordan Harbinger Show - 811: Jan Broberg | The True Crime Story of a Young Girl Abducted

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Jan Broberg (@janbroberg) is an actress, singer, dancer, host of The Jan Broberg Show, subject of the Netflix documentary Abducted In Plain Sight and Peacock's A Friend of the Family, and author of The Jan Broberg Story: The True Crime Story of a Young Girl Abducted. What We Discuss with Jan Broberg: One in four children will be molested, and 97 percent of the time, it's by a family member. In Jan Broberg's case, it was by a close "friend" of the family. How this predator — himself a father of five — expertly infiltrated the trust of Jan's family when she was just a child and manipulated her, her siblings, and her parents into questioning their very reality. How Jan was kidnapped by this family "friend" not once, but twice as a teenager, and what happened in the aftermath when she was finally recovered. Why this story — and countless stories like it — should serve as a wake-up call to legislators that we need to update public policy and raise awareness of this all-too-common threat to our children. How our children can be prepared to speak up when the adults in their lives violate their trust and abuse them — and what we as adults can do to ensure their claims are taken seriously and remove them from danger. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/811 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we start this show, I want to let you know it has some adult themes in it, so no kids in the car for this one. And if you leave the kids in the car and you still play the episode, don't blame me when they have nightmares. Now, on to the show. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. I'd already planned to tell my sister, because I was turning 16. I knew where my dad had hit the gun that he had bought. We had never had a gun before. My dad bought a gun after the first kidnapping.

I knew where it was hidden. I had a plan. I would tell Susan if she didn't want to do the mission. I would kill her, and then I'd kill myself. It was all planned out, but I had to finish the show at my theater camp first. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people.

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and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Remember, if you want to search for anything that's ever been on the show, any feedback Friday, any interview, any promo code, you can use our AI search pod. It's all chat GPT enabled. We're all chat GPT enabled over here on the show. Jordan Harbinger.com slash AI is where you can find it. And if it breaks or you can break it or you get it to say something racist, definitely let me know. I'd love to know how to improve this thing, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. This episode contains graphic or at least super scary descriptions of child abuse, so maybe no little kids in the car for this one.

the rest of the story is just kind of weird and bizarre and possibly actually important for children, two here. One in four children will be molested in their life, which is an astronomically huge number if you think about it. And 97% of the time, it's by a family member. In this particularly wild story, not only was the victim, our guest today, Jan Broberg, targeted by a predator close to the family, but she was targeted in an especially aggressive and creepy way involving both of her parents and even aliens. And yes, I said aliens, I'm going to let her tell the story. Here we go with Jan Broberg. Your story from when you were a little girl was with a predator that your family considered close to being blood relative. Tell us who this guy was. So he moved into our area

with his wife and five children and their children matched all of us in age and we became dear friends. We met him at church. And so he owned a brand new friend. furniture store in town. And he was like in the paper, you know, new business owner, you know, moved here to Pocatello and, and they lived just a couple, about a block and a half away, you know, just up the street from where we lived. And so it was a natural friendship that happened between us kids and his kids because we were the same age. He had three boys. We had three girls. Plus he had a couple other kids. And we became best friends. And he made sure of that. And then he created special relationships, you know, with all of us. And he was like the Pied Piper.

everybody loved him, you know, and he became my dad's best friend. And of course, he knew exactly how to manipulate everybody to keep them separate in some ways. And then all together as a family and his family, you know, it was like our best friend. He was like your favorite uncle. When you say he did certain things to keep you guys separate, did he have like secrets with each kid or something? What was 2020 hindsight? What was he doing? You know, it wasn't necessarily secrets. It was just he would always give each individual a special compliment or you know you're awfully talented in this way or oh you look so pretty today and not necessarily within earshot of the rest of the family he did that with me he definitely did that with my mother he would compliment my dad in other ways about how wonderful he was

in the business in his flower shop in his church and church callings and he just had a way of making sure that everybody felt as if they were special and that it was like important to have him be your friend. Right. It was like he was the popular guy. You know. That definitely makes sense. Right. Yeah. You won his approval and he set it up that way. Yeah. Because that's a status gain for him, which gets compliance from other people, which is funny because I used to sort of teach these things as like dating concepts a million years ago. And it's like, okay, well, if you have a high status, you get the other people of follow you. It's a thing. and it increases your status and your ability to, let's say, get dates.

And in this case, it's his ability to get people to do things that he wants. And, you know, it's funny because in the book, and I assume this was conscious on your part, but I don't even know how many people would catch something like this. There are little signs that he's a predator that you drop skillfully early in the book. For example, and tell me if I'm just reading into this too much, in the first two pages, this guy, he comes over to take you horseback riding, and he pops a voice. vitamin in your mouth. And it's like, most people would be like, whatever, but it's just this very subtle violation of physical boundaries that's wildly inappropriate, but in a very small

way that he's using, and I assume there's a million little examples like this where he just pushes, pushes, pushes, and it's like, okay, are the parents going to do anything? No. Is she going to resist it anyway? No. At least, it really does seem like that was almost like a test, and then he does it, does it, does it. And then of course, later on, we find out that he, you know, Spoiler alert, he's freaking drugging you. And he probably told you it was vitamins. Oh, definitely. And he had us all, he had a special doctor that he knew in Salt Lake.

And he said he's a really good allergist and the girls are always sick. We should have them get allergy tests. So we did. We parents, you know, we're like, okay, let's get the girls allergy tested. And then all of a sudden we have a little allergy pill, which is in a capsule form. And I remember the color. It was yellow and green. And we took those for a year before he was filling them.

with drugs. He was slow. It's the slow burn of a predator that could be patient. Now, looking in hindsight, I know it's because he already had another little girl he was abusing. So he didn't need to get there too fast. And then he had others that he was prepping before he was done with me. He had another woman who was a psychiatric nurse and her daughter that he was prepping and becoming the mom's, you know, love interest and best friend and all to get to her nine-year-old. And that took three years there. And so that's the kind of predatory behavior. You know, it's the slow cat in the willows that's like looking for the perfect opportunity to strike. And that's what he did.

He set up lots of people and over time. Yeah, it's really creepy because it's not this clumsy like, hey, why don't you send your kids to my house for a sleepover? And you're like, that guy is creepy. Don't let Jan go over to his house. It's like he just made it so easy for everyone to trust him. Everybody loved the guy. And then it's like, I'm surprised that when it came out, people weren't like him. No, it can't be.

Or were they? Oh, totally. People were very much like that. He has kids. How could he be the guy? Exactly. Exactly. And you know, you give the, I guess the 70s, it might have been a little bit different.

People were less aware for sure. We didn't even know what a pedophile was. Literally didn't know. No, literally didn't know. I mean, it was just not used yet. That, you know, it's like saying mental health today. We didn't know anything like that. We called people, you know, crazy or whatever. But the point for me is that this is not an old story. This is a current story because it is one in four girls right now and one in six boys right now her abused, molested or raped by someone they know, someone in their family, their congregation, their community, their school, their sports team. It's not a scary stranger. And until this really comes to our frontal awareness where we go. oh my gosh, we have to make public policy changes. We have to put, you know, PSA commercials together

that teach our five-year-old, their body parts and that they're theirs. And that they can call 911 and say, you know, Daddy's penis is hurting me. And they can actually make a call because they can call if grandma's on the floor, they'll call 911, a four-year-old will call 911. They have no idea that they're being hurt. Right. I mean, they know it hurts, but they don't know what to do about it. And who can they tell? Because they're being rewarded and threatened at the same time. Well, let's go back to your story as well. How did this begin? You said he moved into the neighborhood. He becomes the best friend. He's taking you horseback riding. But then suddenly he just kind of, and I say suddenly because it was sudden for your parents and for you, I guess, but he just

takes you. Can you take us through this? Yeah. So we, over three years, we are doing hundreds of activities with this family. We eat dinners. We do vacations. I mean, they're our best friends. And then one afternoon, after my piano lesson, he had arranged, so he said, and we had been there before. I have a, you know, this client, he needs furniture, I got to go measure the wall, he has a ranch. I'm going to take Jan, I'll take her out there and go horseback riding. And I'd been several times with him and with his oldest son, who was my age, who I had a crush on. And so I'd been horseback riding before. This wasn't something unusual.

The thing was my dad, about six months earlier had started to kind of pull away. Like, we do too much with this family. My dad's an identical twin. We have cousins that live farther away, but it's like a mile and a half, right? It's not that far. He's like, we need to spend more time with my, you know, we're just spending too much time with the birch tolls. Why do you think your dad started to pull back suddenly? Because it seems like that's out of nowhere.

I mean, I don't suddenly go, you know, my best friend is wearing on me. Let's stop hanging out with him so much. He must have known something or felt something. He felt something. For sure, he felt something. He felt his own guilt because he'd had that masturbation experience. with Birchtold in the car. Okay, well, way to spoil that one.

You know, let's just go for it. Because, I mean, I get asked all the time. You know, how did you forgive your parents? And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm so sick of this. I had wonderful parents. I had 12 perfect childhood years. I mean, I was never yelled out or spanked or told anything negative about myself. My parents were so complimentary.

They were so supportive. And we ate dinner together around our dinner table without any electronics, mind you, in that time. And we talked. And our parents listened to us. We had very good communication with our parents. Now, had we had a whole lot of talks about sex or body parts? No, but... We guys were Mormons, not known for the open sex talk at the dinner table. Yeah. Right. But yet, if we'd have asked a question, our parents would have told us. Sure. It was very middle America. Dad goes to work every day. Mom's a stay-at-home mom. We just had a really

wonderful childhood. So when that master manipulator, about two years into the relationship with my parents, and you can watch the series, you'll see exactly how it happened. If you watch the series on Peacock, a friend of the family, you can understand it. When you see it in the documentary, it feels like, oh my gosh, these parents are so stupid. Well, it's because you're not getting the context. Right. Watch the series. You'll get the context of how this happens. People do things that they would otherwise never do because somebody is pulling the strings. Well, yeah. So they, Anyway, they end up in, they go to lunch or a dinner. I think mom and us were out of town.

We had gone up to see my grandma. And he says, oh, I'm having problems in my marriage, which of course had been an ongoing conversation for years. And I just am not attracted to her. Anyway, he goes down the whole story. And he says, just help me out, brother. You know, just help me out brother. He calls him his brother by this time.

They're like brothers. And, you know, unless a guy has never, you know, masturbated before, maybe it would be shocking that something like this could happen, but I think most people have. I think most girls have. I think most of us have. So it might feel a little different in hindsight because you're looking at somebody that's in their 30s with a friend instead of in their teens. But looking back on that experience where my dad basically gave him a hand job in the car. Not basically. He gave him a hand job in the car. Yeah, exactly. I mean, That was it. And when you see that scene, you know, with Jake Lacey and Colin Hanks in the Peacock series, you really feel the weight of what my father then carried around. Because my dad was a very religious man and he knew it was wrong. And then on top of that, I think that he started to feel like I got manipulated. I got, I did something that I would not otherwise have done. And so I think from that point on is kind of my dad,

just pulling back. Like, he spends too much time here. We're with the Birchshould's too much. We need our own space, our own time, our own family. I think it was a combination of guilt for what he had done. And then also just maybe it woke something up in him. He didn't think that he was after his daughter. Might have just thought maybe he's gay and he's got a crush on him.

I mean, if some guy's trying to convince me to jerk him off, I think I might be like, wait a minute. Are we just buddies? So what's going on here? Right. Exactly. You know, and I think that could have been. part of it too because he had talked to my doubt before that happened about, you know, wouldn't it

be nice just to be bachelors and just let's go get a, let's go get a pad, you know, these are all 70s words. Let's be bachelors and jerk each other off in the car. Like, I thought bachelors meant we play pickleball or something. I don't need, this all, this has escalated way too quickly for me. Exactly. I know. And so I get that there's, you know, an uproar over that, but I also know the deep shame and guilt that my father felt for not having known more or seen him more in the right light. And I think that that part is really, really hard for me and my sisters because we know the parents that we had. And it's hard because when people put the blame there, they take the blame off of the person who was responsible for all of the actions that were wrong. And that's the perpetrator, the predator.

Sure. And so to me, he's the only bad guy in my story. Of course. No, of course. I totally understand that. And I think people are blown away by this already. This is the part where they're like, what the actual is going on here. And it doesn't end there, folks. Not by a long shot. Oh, no. Okay.

So he takes you horseback riding and then he just doesn't take you home. But, you know, it- Yeah, he drugs me because I'm allergic to horses. So that was one of the tips that goes back to that vitamin thing. Okay. So he gave me my thing. It looked just like the thing I've been taken for over a year. And I'd pop it in my mouth and the next thing I know I wake up in the back of a moving motor home.

I knew it was moving. You could hear the rumble of the motor, but I was strapped by my wrists and my ankles to the back bed of the, and there was a partition. You couldn't see who was driving. And a box with a funny sounding, alien-sounding voice woke me kind of out of that drug-induced sleep. And it called me female companion. It is time for your mission to begin. And again, people start going, oh my gosh, how could she be so stupid? Well, I was talking. 12, and I was an innocent 12 because I was the oldest. I didn't have older siblings, you know, teaching me the ropes. And I was in a very bubble-like community. I mean, it was probably 30% Mormon and the rest of my friends were pastoral. Everybody went to church. It's all I know. I had Presbyterian friends and Methodist friends and Catholic friends and Greek-Orgino friends in a little old Idaho. So the voices were coming from what, a cassette tape recorder, 20-20 hindsight or some kind of radio? It looked more like an intercom. Now that looking back on it, Because it was just like a little white boxy thing with speaker, you know, with the little lines and the speaker behind it.

But, yeah, I'm sure that he was playing tapes or something that he had recorded. And back in those three years where he was grooming the family, all of us, he took us to science fiction movies. We were watching I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched and Lost in Space and the Twilight Zone on the weekends. Those were our shows. and we were going to see Planet of the Apes and other science fiction was a huge. It was the beginning of the whole Roswell swell, or it was the middle of that. Yeah. And so there was a lot of talk in our newspapers. There would be UFO sightings, and they'd have these little black and white pictures with this little disc, and he wasn't telling me,

but I'm at the kitchen table. Mom's doing the dishes over here. Dad's reading the newspaper in the other room, And before he gets past the back door in the kitchen, he throws the newspaper on the table in front of me and Karen and Susan. We're sitting there doing our homework. And he's like, Marian, there's been another UFO sighting. You know, he says to my mom, UFO siding. He's like, is this the end of times? Is this the gathering of Israel? Is this the time when Jesus is coming again?

Is this Armageddon? What is this? All these, well, he's throwing around words that you hear at church. Right. You know, and we're nine and seven and five, you know? So you think he's programming you by like walking in and talking around you to say like, aliens, they're real. So you're not like, what is this crap, this speaker playing? Now you're like, it's the aliens.

Yeah. They're real and they're talking to me. And what are these alien voices coming out of the intercom? What are they saying? They're saying female companion, it is time for your mission to begin. You will save our planet. It's like all these things about me being a special child that I will have a special child. special child will save our planet.

And it's all in this kind of staccato, broken English sort of way that it said in this high-pitched sound. Very, very scary. For me, it was the scariest part of the whole thing. Even being raped by this man hundreds of times wasn't as scary as that voice. I'm not kidding. I'm sure. I mean, you're being talked to by aliens and you're 12 years old, 12 going on 10, right, in terms of like emotional maturity.

Exactly. Yeah, and physical maturity. I didn't hit puberty until I was 17. So you were a young 12, so maybe even younger than 10, maybe like going on an 8. Yeah, eight or nine. So he's convinced you what, that you're like a half alien and that you have to have a baby to save an alien planet? Is that the gist of this plot? Yeah, so basically how that plot twist goes is that my father is not my real father.

He's not my biological father if we were using the right terms today. Interesting little wedge that that particular detail drives between. you and your dad, huh, that he's not your real bio father? Exactly. Because he could have chosen your mom, but he didn't. He chose your dad. No, because he was still grooming my mom. I think he knew my dad was going to, I think he knew he was almost out of, what do you

call that? He's on thin ice. Yeah, he was on thin ice with my dad. And so he's still, so my mother, whose name happens to be Mary. Oh, okay. Is my, is the mother, my mother, but father. by a being from their planet, like their God has fathered this child, me, through Mary, my mother. Just, look, when you've acted out the Jesus story your whole life at Christmas time,

and you know who Mary is and who Joseph is and who God the father is and how Mary got pregnant and had the baby and that's what they do. Right. He followed existing programming that you already had from church and just turned it into creepy alien and, you know, rape plot. Yeah. It's called inculcation. Yeah.

Yeah. You take a familiar thing. I can talk about brainwashing all day long and all the different terms, but that's in simplistic form. You take something very familiar to somebody, anybody. You can do this to adults too. And you twist it just enough so that it's almost like there's a question mark. Is this could be real.

This could be true. You know, because that little twist plot has a whole body in something that you already know or you already believe. And your conformational biases at work, all the things that we, you know, that I go around and try to help people understand. Well, right. Like, if you take somebody who's never heard the Jesus story and you say, so, your dad's not your real dad,

and then this extraterrestrial being somehow impregnated your mom and had you, and now you're a special half breed, you'd be like, this makes no sense you're insane. Right. But if you believe another version of that same story where everybody has slightly different names and it's for a slightly different reason, you're like, oh, this happens in other cases.

And I just happen to be the chosen one now, which is why I'm a 12-year-old girl. in a motorhome driving to what, Mexico with a 40-something-year-old father of five? About 40. Yeah, yikes. So he takes you to Mexico somehow, and what's the plan from here? He wants to get me to South America. This is in hindsight.

But the plan is just to, you know, do his dirty work as long as he can. I don't know at what point he would have been sick of me because I know there were little girls before me and little girls after me. So I don't think I was going to hold his attention for, you know, much past those years, those tender years. So, but he was going to have me for as long as he could. And the interesting thing about me, at least from some of the other girls that I have now met and talked to that were his victims as well, is that he did have some kind of a super fascination with me because he never left me alone my whole life. So this story goes way past the 70s. And so I look back on that and I think, what was it?

That was he just, did he just hate my father? That he just wanted to continue to torment and torture our family. Anyway, so I think for him it was just to get as far away as he could to have me to himself, leaving his own family or thinking that he would be able to coerce my parents into giving him permission to marry me. Right, at age 12. So what is this creepy marriage guardianship idea that he has? Well, according to him and all of the phone calls that went back to, you know, his brother

and one to my parents that got through with me and my sisters. And we have the FBI recordings of those. And some of those are actually in the series on the Peacock. It's the actual voices of all of us. Yeah, we'll link to the series in the show notes. It's on Peacock streaming so people can find it if they want to. That's interesting that you have the actual recording. So what, but what is his, his plan as to what, like, to extort your parents into letting

you marry him so that he's not considered to be raping a child because he's legally married to you somehow in Mexico, even though you're 12? Yes. Is that a... Yes, that's exactly it. I mean, you think about it and you put it together and you're like, how could a madman possibly think this could work? But he really, really did think it would work.

And he actually had me married to him. In Mexico, I was not present. Oh, my God. He had, he paid some people. They had our names. I had a piece of paper. Well, I didn't have it. There was a piece of paper that said we were married.

He also did that for me because I knew growing up that, you know, sex was supposed to be special and saved for when you're married. So, you know, that's what I've been taught. And so I was like, oh, this makes this okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. We're going to be married. Okay. You know, because again, even though the body and the brain and the mental state of little Jan has not caught up to reality and truth, there are certain things that, you know, are right or wrong according to your belief system. And then you have this guy who's going to make sure that you're okay with, you know, lay there so I can do my worst. You know, it's like, it's so interesting that there was. enough of those kinds of things too, which I think is how predators work. I think that's why it's so often almost impossible to see it. Because it's somebody that's already close to you, Jordan. It's not somebody that is sort of a friend or maybe an acquaintance. It's somebody in your sphere that's a friend, a family member, a trusted person in your life. And if you are not willing to take your inner eye and go, something seems a little odd.

and then watch and then actually listen to the gut brain. You know, we got a brain up here. Sometimes it doesn't get to see what's actually happening on some subconscious gut brain level. And I just, I have to tell people, if you think something's off, something's probably off. Don't dismiss it. Your secondary thought is, that's the first kind of thought or the feeling. And then the next thought is, well, that's impossible. That guy got teacher of the year.

Or, oh, that's impossible. She's like the best dance teacher in the whole community. She has students on Broadway. Or, oh, that's impossible. That's Uncle Henry. Everybody loves him. That's your next thought is to dismiss your gut feeling. Don't do that.

Stop doing that. Don't do that anymore. Because you have to be able to watch long enough to actually see something that your brain, brain, can go, oh, that's evidence. So he goes, he takes you to Mexico. and fake marries you, but then he somehow keeps you fooled even though he gets arrested by Mexican police. How did he end up getting arrested by Mexican police?

How did this whole thing sort of unravel for him in Mexico? So the FBI is working with, they, what happens is they find from a phone booth call that he made to his brother, who was a car salesman and owned a car dealership. He had called his brother, and that phone was, was bugged as well. well eventually because that's who he had called a couple of times before. So he put enough coinage in the machine that it can count the coins. And that's how they knew geographically where they thought he was in Mexico and what cities. Yeah, even back in the 70s, they had some pretty good, you know, ways of narrowing things down. What's really interesting about this is the way that

they figured this out was some guy who knew the phone system really well, listened to the call and heard how much money he put into the payphone and then listened and said that was 48 cents or whatever, 50 cents. So he must be within this circle because 50 cents gets you another whatever five minutes at this particular rate, which gets you to this. And when I was a kid, I could do the same thing, not with distance because I didn't have those maps that the phone guy had, but I could identify the sound that coins made when they went into a payphone if I was listening to the call. And it's a really unique skill that you get from messing with. with the phone system for years at a time

and having nothing better to do as I did when I was a kid. But this guy with this sort of kind of dumb skill ended up being the linchpin in finding a missing kid, which is really, really a fascinating thing. So when you put a coin into a payphone, it makes a sound. This guy was able to figure out what quarters, dimes, nickels sounded like, count how many they were, figure out using phone company maps the distance that that was.

And then they pinpointed people that he might know in that distance and figured out who he was calling, which is where from, which is freaking, So genius. It's amazing. Really, really amazing. We found the pay phone that he called from. That is some Matlock level-ish right there.

Right. Yeah. Amazing. Credit to him. So credit to that guy for having like the most useless skill and putting it to action to rescue a missing child. Like he's never used that skill again, that guy. That's really true.

And so that's how they honed in and pretty soon working with the Federallis. They knew. where the motorhome was parked, and he had moved around. We had moved, you know, deeper into Mexico, and one really early in the morning, still dark outside. They just kicked the door down of the motorhome, and they came in full force. They grabbed him. They grabbed me, put us in this little car. I was sitting in the front seat between two Federals.

He's in the back. I can see his eyeballs in the rearview mirror, and I'm like, oh, and I can tell. He's trying to tell me something, like, don't tell, don't tell. And then what happens is before my parents can get on a plane and come to Mexico and get me in those 48 hours or so while I'm in this little room in this Mexican, you know, one of those old, you know, like the big courtyard and the whole thing and all the prison cells are kind of down below. He pays a guard off with his wedding ring and he, this one guard brings me down to his cell. And in the cell of the Mexican prison, he tells me, he says, either the, you know, Zeta and Zetra, the aliens. had a name, you always want to personalize those people that you're trying to help save their planet, of course. I just want people to know they had a name. Zeta and Zetha have come to me and have told me here in the cell, you know, that we can't talk about these things. And if we talk about these things, then they'll vaporize us, which was already a threat. And that's basically, these things are what,

the sexual abuse and the fact that he's got this whole stupid plan to have you have his child, alien baby? Yes, have this child, the aliens themselves, the alien baby, to save their planet, which of course meant the stuff that was happening, like the rape, all of that, without saying those words. And then that we couldn't talk about the relaxing pills, which were just more of my vitamins, where I was in and out of drug-induced sleep. A lot of the time, I was awake, but I was, you know, those. And I couldn't, that I could not have any relationship with any other males, including my father, that I was to save myself. Which is so weird. That little, that last one is so freaking bizarre.

Yeah. Like that's just, hey, I want to make sure that you're still isolated and I have this last power play. But also, mostly like 75% of his thing is, I don't want to get in trouble for raping this little girl. Did he have an excuse that he was planning on telling your parents in the FBI for why he brought you to Mexico? Obviously, you disclosing that he had had sexual intercourse with you would have really been a problem for him. But he must have had some other thing where he can say, yeah, we were supposed to go to Mexico and it's just all fine and cool. I mean, what was his plan? Oh, he had an answer for everything.

His plan was, if you would have let me marry Jan, then I could have come back to the, you know, the United States and not have been facing them throwing me in jail forever. But if I couldn't marry her, then the Mexican police were going to throw me in jail forever. I just had a depressive break and I just kept driving. Instead of driving home, I drove towards the border and I ended up in Mexico. And I, she's driving me crazy. of course I want to come home. I don't want anything to do with her. And I just, you guys, you guys messed it all up by calling the police and the FBI.

Yeah, blame my parents. So he throws the blame back on your parents for not letting him marry you as an excuse to get out of the situation that he put himself in because he supposedly had a depressive break, which caused him to kidnap a 12-year-old girl and drive her to Mexico. This is like the craziest mental gymnastics this guy goes through. Yeah. And you think back on the 70s when, you know, psychotherapy and therapeutic practice was just beginning. I mean, there weren't even child abuse laws in the early 1970s. Those were just getting passed federally.

I mean, you talk about when rights came in the 70s. For children, they didn't come until the late 70s where states were adopting actually. I mean, you couldn't beat your animals, but you could beat your kids. And it wasn't a crime. And I still say in 2023, we are still. still protecting the predator and not the children. It is still a family problem instead of a public problem. This is a criminal problem. And we are acting as if it's a family problem. And we're just going to shut our eyes and just put our head in the sand and just not deal with it. And it just drives me crazy. That's what I'm trying to change.

You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Jan Broberg. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every week. It's because of my network, and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free in non-gross, non-shmoozy ways. It's our six-minute networking course over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Yes, the course is all about improving your relationship-building skills, but it's non-cringe, it's down to earth, it's not awkward, it's not going to make you look schmoozy and social climbery. It's there to make you a better connector, a better colleague,

a better friend, a better peer, just takes a few minutes a day, and many of the guests on the show. subscribe and contribute to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company. You can find the course at jordanharbinger.com slash course. And again, it's free and it's going to stay that way. Now, back to Jan Broberg. What is this guy's wife thinking the whole time? You know, your guys are all family friends. His wife and your mom was she, she must have been like, I'm really sorry. My husband is completely insane. He kidnapped your daughter. Or what was what happened? What was her reaction to this. Well, a lot of her reaction was she was also our best friend and had five children by this man. Yeah. And is a stay-at-home mom has no career. No. So I believe that a lot of her,

you know, she was still at our house all during the kidnapping and the kids were, they were our best friends, not just mine, but my two sisters. Oh my God. So they, the kids are coming over and they're riding, they're riding bikes and they're playing with my sisters because we're best friends. And Gail's like, you know, Bob, he's so gregarious. He probably just, and she's the one that explained that Bob had been being treated for depression, which was a brand new word to everybody too. They're like, well, what is it? It's called manic depression.

And my mom's like, well, what's manic depression? Well, you're really high. You know how Bob can be like the life of the party and you're like that. And then he can just drop down where he's just like in this terrible state. And then she told my mom and dad about them trying to, you know, adopt this little girl out of Mexico, you know, and that he was so devastated when they went there. And mind you, people that are in our documentary are people that wrote them letters of recommendation to adopt a little 10-year-old girl from Mexico. So now Gail's talking about that, about, you know, he was just so devastated when we got

there and the mother just wouldn't let her go, the little girl, even though she was in abject poverty and we wanted to give her a nice home. So I don't think Gail knew, but I think she had a sense of something about how he had always wanted to have. And they did have a little girl. Their last child was a little girl out of the five children. She was just a little two-year-old at this time, a baby when they moved in, two or three by this time.

So, you know, reiterating these stories about his depression and how much he loved children and wanted to take care of, you know, he took care of his little sister on the farm and his stepdad made him sleep in the barn unless he was taking care of his little sister and then he could sleep in the house. And, you know, it's just, it's that ball of yarn that's just all tied into some kind of, oh, so he's depressed

and why would he do it? Don't call the police, please don't call them. Please don't, you know, cause a big fuss. You know, he'll just be back and laughing his head off. Oh, I just, you know, I just thought I'd trick you all. You know. Just kidnapped your daughter to Mexico. It's just a big gag.

Yeah. To her, it's not kidnapping at all. Crazy. And then he somehow convinces your family into signing affidavit saying, okay, Jan was unharmed. He had permission to take you to Mexico, drop the prosecution. And the FBI and the prosecutor are like, what the hell are you doing signing this? Yes.

Yes. More or less, you got that right. And so the way it. really happened was his attorney, drew up these papers, called my parents on the phone. Now, mind you, my parents don't have an attorney. This happens by the state or the federal government. Yeah, your parents don't press charges. The state presses charges. That's right. So the state's going to press charges, and then there's going to be a messy trial. So this attorney for Birchtold calls, and she's a friend. She's bought flowers at my dad's store. She's our neighbor. She's

also just lives a few blocks away from us. You know, my dad was a very, very loved and respected businessman in Pocatello. I had a flower shop. He was there for the weddings and there for the funerals. He knew people. He had been, you know, so he knew her. Right. And they go down to her office. They don't know they shouldn't go. They don't have anybody advising them. They've never been in trouble. They've never had a speeding ticket. They've never been in a cart room. You never had an attorney for any reason except some friends, you know, so they go down to talk to her because she's going to, she's going to has a solution. So we don't have to have a messy trial. And she shows them these papers and they're both like, well, that's, it's not true.

I mean, we didn't give him permission to take Jan to Mexico. We don't think he heard her. She said, you know, we've had her checked out by a doctor. And, and the doctor says she looks okay. You know, of course, they don't have all the cool toys of doctors have today. They don't have. Right. Well, they don't have rape.

They just, she didn't have bruises on her face, so she's fine. That's kind of that kind of there. Exactly. That's exactly right. And then she says, so if you don't sign these papers that say that you gave him permission, you know, your dear friend, you don't think anything happened. You don't think he would have hurt her, which is true. They didn't think that.

She said, then he's going to, then we're going to have to bring out the part that your unfit parents and that Bob had a sexual experience with Birchtold, with B, and we're going to bring all of this out, and we're going to have to tell the press, all these things about what terrible parents you are. And my mom and dad are just sitting there. My mom's kind of looking at my dad, who's never really told her explicitly

what happened with Birchstold in the car, just that, oh, you know, it was kids stuff, and I went and repented, and I'll never forgive myself, but don't, it's over. That was, you know, it was one time, Marianne, you know, or two times, I don't know what it was, but it doesn't matter. He knew.

he knew how to manipulate them even when he wasn't in the room. And so that attorney tried to get them to sign by threatening them. And they did sign those papers. And then, of course, everybody at the, you know, Pete Welsh and all the stay, everybody's like, you, why did you do that? So then they retracted their signatures. This is the part that is not in the documentary. It is in the series. And it's in the book, right, but it's not in the documentary that went viral. So people don't know that they actually, three days later, there's a newspaper article in the paper. that retracts what the article in the paper had been a few days earlier that, oh, Broberg said that he didn't hurt her and that he had their permission. Three days later, there's an article that says they've retracted those statements. They said they were coerced to sign those papers. The trial is going to go forward. So that's how the whole story goes. Yeah.

What's wild to me is the predator later gets back in the good graces of the family. And the way that he does this is, and I'm trying not to be judgey here because you've had enough of that in your life. But not of my dad. No, not of your dad. He never is in the good grace of my dad. He's never let back in my house. The secondhand job was the final straw.

I say that with love because your parents do seem like lovely people, which was a kind of their downfall, right? Because they were so nice that they just. They are. It was like they were so understanding that their brain kind of fell out of their head when it comes to this particular situation. Yeah, like a lot of people who have been groomed and it's somebody in their family. That's why most people who have a predator that's a close, close,

friend or a family member, never get prosecuted. They never go to jail. They just keep showing up at the potato salad at your family reunion. Right. Well, it's so tricky. Right. Like either, it's either, well, you're going to cause a huge stink in the family or Aunt Edna's going to be mad when you throw her kid in jail and that's going to be a whole thing.

Or it's going to be, how did you let this guy do all of this over such a long time to your daughter? This is your situation. How did you let this guy do so many bad things to your family? And the answer is, well, because we would look like. idiots if we put a stop to it. Yeah, but look how you look like now. Yeah, well, 2020 hindsight now we realize we were wrong, but it's too late. So he gets back in the good graces of your mom, and he even tells your mom, and this is so manipulative that it makes me just want to

scream. He tells your mom, oh, I really wanted to be with you. I took Jan instead because you're such a good wife. You're too faithful to your husband. It's just an insane thing to say, literally insane, but he's playing to your mother's emotions, to her insecurities, to the fact that their relationship was a little bit rocky and your mom's all like, oh, he really loved me. You know, that's why he did all this. And it's like, she's manipulating. Like, you just want to tear your hair out when you hear and see this in the series and in the book. Right. And he set that up for those three years before he ever took me. He's telling mom, oh my gosh, Marianne, your legs. Oh my gosh, Marianne, this dinner. Oh, my goodness, Marianne. Of course, you know, basically,

for the most part, in private moments when he comes to pick us all up for school, because he's on his way to the furniture store. The school is right on the way. So his kids are in the car. We jump in his car. He'd been doing that for years and stop. My dad's gone to work. My dad makes us mush and toast and then leaves and goes to work earlier than our school time. And so he's gone. So Urshel has this opportunity to walk in the back door and say, it's a great day. Get in the car, brovers, let's get to school and to say something to my mom in private while she's cleaning up breakfast. He just had that in spades. Many other people around our community were like, well, he's so handsome and he's so nice. Oh, he came over and did this for me. Oh, he came over and painted my fence.

Oh, he came over and did fix my car. Oh, he came over and brought us some furniture at wholesale. We weren't the only people that he did these kinds of things for. He looked like a good guy. And all the while, he's planting these little, these little attractions, these little flirtations. So yeah. Interesting. Well, he switches to trying to convince your mom that she was the one he wanted the whole time. And then taking you was all some big plan to get closer to her. I mean, he's such a manipulator. But it also, he kind of had easy, willing victims that were naive to the point of what now would look like to the rest of us like negligence, right? Yeah, I can see how people would feel that way. I can understand it. But what I really wish people could do is go, what is the one thing?

in my life that I've done in secret that I wish I hadn't done, how did I get there? And then retract all the steps before they actually did that. Most people don't pull the trigger on idea number one on day one of that one flirtation or attraction. A friend of mine who used to, frankly, do heroin, said, you don't start with heroin, man. And I'm like, oh, that's a good point, right? You just, you don't start with heroin generally.

You start with something else or meth. That's right. Right. You work your way up the ladder. And so in this weird, ironic twist, your mom ends up speaking to the predator and spending the night with him in the same motor home where he had kidnapped you and tied you to the bed, which is so just poetically gross in so many ways. Yeah, it is.

And the predator's wife, and I'm not going to call him Bob because he's a garbage person. He doesn't deserve a name. The predator's wife, and because he has the same name as somebody is your dad. it's confusing. But the Predator's wife keeps inviting the kids over for overnight visits and pursuing the friendship. These people seem absolutely shameless and continue to be manipulative. And frankly, Gail, the wife, right? She just seems like an accomplice. I think nowadays, we would say, we would look at somebody like her and we would say, you are not only negligent or grossly negligent, you are an accessory to this. You know, you're an accomplice to this.

I do fault her for that. However, you kind of can't decide if she's, bad, right? You know her actions are bad, but you're like, does she just want to pretend her husband is not a sexually deranged predator who's going after their friends and her friends' kids? And so she's acting as if nothing is wrong, as opposed to being a willing, malignant, accomplice accessory to this. Does that distinction make sense? Because she seems like a person who just wants to bury it, her head in the sand, even though this is also horrible, versus being like, oh, raping kids is okay. Yeah, and I think you have to also, I think that distinction is very good. And I think it's very apribeau to so many people today who are living with a predator.

And on some level, they know it. And on another level, they cannot see it because they cannot let it be true. Right. It would undo their whole life. It would undo their whole life. And what would I do next? How would I make a living? I mean, I interview on my own podcast show, survivors of sexual assault.

And it's almost always, if it was somebody in their home, it's because their mother basically said, well, I need him. You know, I'm sorry your stepfather's doing this or you'll get over it or you'll get through it. I need him. Or if they know, and then more common than that is, well, I think you've made something up, honey. I think that, you know, oh, there's blood on your panties. Where did that come from? Well, you know, blah, blah, blah. Oh, honey, I think you've got that mixed up.

Or gaslighting. Or we don't talk like that. We don't talk about things like that. You know, like they're on their high horse of, you know, their righteousness or whatever. Like, that can't be possible because, you know, this is my grandma. grandpa. You know, this is my father. This is your grandpa. Don't say things like that. And it's real. It's true. The child is being being molested or raped. And people, they will not see it because they can't. It's too awful. Can you imagine if it's your father? Can you imagine if it's your brother? You have to take your closest people

and go, how hard would it be for me to believe it? How hard would it be for me to actually wrap my head around it? And I think that was the case. And first of all, you have a doctor saying nothing happened. You have Jan who's saying nothing happened, like nothing like that. Gross. No, of course not. Because, of course, I have the mission. The aliens. I'm being watched by the aliens.

They're still there. So you have all these people around you to, I mean, we're all protecting the predator. Right. On some level. It's so crazy how he set that up. You're all protecting him. And the FBI's like, let us arrest this guy. Like, no.

Right. And all the while, he's sneaking into your room at night, which is so brazen. Yep. And playing the alien voice intercom tape thing. Yep. And telling you to call and meet him. I mean, he just has no fear of consequences from the sound of it. Yep, that's exactly right.

All through this next year and a half. I'm home. I mean, it's just a constant. I get a note from somebody at school that I don't know. And it says go to, you know, center street to the phone booth right there, you know, and I ride my bike after school. I mean, I'm not even driving a car. I mean, I'm only 12.

I'm still 12. I'm 12 and 13. It's so fucked up, Jan. Yeah, it really is. And I'll tell you what, that's why that's the most common age of abuse and rape of children is age 9 to about age 13 or 14. If you knew the numbers, you would just want to go throw up immediately in your toilet. It is so insane by an older, maybe a 20-something, you know, or even an 18, 19, 20, but clear up into the seven. and 80s. I mean, most perpetrators, pedophiles who are criminals, and I know not all act on it,

but those that are, they say that they offend between 30 and 70 children over the course of their life. Oh, my God. That's such a high number. That's an FBI statistic. Oh, my God. That's awful. I did not know that. That's so awful. I really, I had never thought about the same predator going after that many kids. I thought it would just be like the one they have access to in their house or next door. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's really, that's going to be pure nightmare. The fact that people like this exist at all is terrifying. Really it is. It is. It truly is. Okay. So the alien voice is now telling you that if the predator goes to jail, then you're going to get assigned another male companion who's basically, basically the aliens say, hey, if predator goes to jail, another guy's going to start raping you that you don't even know. That's right. And that's scarier than this guy because you trust him and you like him. Yeah, he's like my favorite uncle. But now over this period of this year and a half between, you know, after the first kidnapping, now all of the things that he's implanted during those 45 days I was missing and then the jail sale and then all of that, like I'm supposed to be in love

with him. I'm supposed to be married to him. I'm supposed to because there's this mission, but it's also that psychological thing that's happening in a little tween brain, which is why that age group is so at risk. Well, you just don't have a blueprint for being like, oh, this is fucking crazy and makes no sense. And I'm being manipulated. You're like, oh, I guess this is what love and relationships are because this is my first one. Exactly. That's exactly right.

That's that tender thing that they, you know, screw with, literally that messes with you in so many ways for the rest of your life. And you work hard at it. And that's my whole thing. You can move forward. I can only imagine like your patterns for adult relationships had to have been super, super screwed up as a result of this, right? Yeah, they were. I was married four times. They were screwed up. Yes. Oh, gosh. Definitely. Yeah. The divide and conquer routine, we didn't really talk about this, but your mom is taking you to meet him and in your mom's essentially working with him against the wishes of your dad. And the divide and conquer routine was so effective. And it looks like, from my perspective, and it looks like also you would agree with this just based on what you wrote in the book, this guy had the affair with your mom. mom and did the weird stuff with your dad simply to get leverage over each of your parents and drive wedges between everyone in the family. Right? Like, he didn't love your mom. He just wanted her to

have an affair with him so he could be like, don't make me tell everyone that you slept with me in the motorhome because everyone at church will find out and your reputation screwed. Like, it was just leverage with this guy. It totally was. It was so calculated and so absolutely premeditated. and when you really look at that and the blackmail that he then used that poor, it really is just incredibly criminal of any person to do things like this. And then at the same time to already be grooming the next victim, to already be grooming the next woman and her daughter at the end of this year and a half in between the two kidnappings, going back in time now and seeing all of the other reports of other girls

and other things that came out after me. and you look at the timeline now, and you're like, how did he juggle it all? Yeah, yeah, full-time job. The amount of crazy that this is, it really does boggle the mind. Because you mentioned he builds this game center and invites you to take a job there over the summer. And you think the parents are like, of course you're not going, which is the first reaction, but. Right, of course. And my dad is constantly at odds with me and I'm having no relationship with him.

We went from this loving relationship to like, I wouldn't even let him hug me or touch me or anything, and I'm always in a fight because I'm always trying to stage that I'm an adult and I'm independent and I want to be with Bert Schold, and this is who I'm going to go and I'm going to be with, and my dad is like, you're 13, because now I'm 13, and you're not doing any of these things, and now Birchtold and his wife have separated. They've moved away from Pocatello. Now they live in a different, they live in Utah instead of Idaho, and now they've separated and now he goes up to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and builds this fund center and invites me, now I'm turning 14. So now it's been, you know, almost a year and a half, two years, almost.

So I go up there, he sends me the money. He gets, gets me a ticket, basically, gives me a wad of cash. I take a taxi to the airport. My mom and dad are like, you're not going. You can't go work there. You're not, you can't be around him. He's forbidden from being around you. He can't even be in the same county as you. That's not, you know, they have no idea that he's been in my bedroom, that he's, you know, that all happened. He hasn't served his time in jail. He's now finally been through the process that he actually is going to go serve his big 15 days in jail, you know, which makes you crazy too. Yeah, he got 15 days in jail. I didn't mention that. That was crazy. I mean, they must have just looked at this kind of child predatory behavior in a totally different way

in the 70s. Oh, definitely. Definitely. There were, again, like I said, there were just barely any child abuse laws period. So they're just grappling with, well, did they let her go or, well, I don't know. Maybe she is in love with him. I don't know what the judge was thinking, but for time served and blah, blah, blah, it went from a five-year sentence down to 15 days. Okay, so, but he hasn't done that yet. He hasn't gone to serve that time yet. That's coming up in September. I fly up there. My mother raced to the airport behind me. My little sister had broken her arm. Karen's like, She went in a taxi. I don't know.

It honked and she ran and she left and I wrapped up my sister's little broken arm in a dish towel. And then my mom is like, get in the car. And she races to the airport. And I'm already in the tiny little, you know, it's a tiny little airport and there's no rules, you know, back then. You know, and she's running. She's trying to grab me. I've already gone through the door. I just hold up the money.

I'm like, I can do whatever I want. You know, like I'm going. Yes, I can. and I've already gone through the thing. I've given my ticket and I've gone through the little door. And then you have to walk down on the tarmac to go onto the little plane. I mean, it's a tiny airport in Pocatello, Idaho. And I get on the plane and I fly to Jackson Hole.

And he's not there to pick me up. Somebody else from the Fun Center picks me up. So I think he was there in the airport. And I think he was watching to make sure I got on that plane. And then he raced back in his own car. Oh, my God. And so I'm at the Fun Center for a few days. Of course, my parents are calling.

an attorney. Anyway, his attorney or somebody, it was a different person, but has called him and said, you have got to get her home because now you're going to violate your parole and you're going to get sent to jail for five years instead of 15 days. Get her home. So I have my birthday, and that's the very last day of July. And then he takes me all the rest of the way home. There's a whole party with his family and the whole thing. He has them all there, all the family, you know, all my friends, you know, his oldest son, who I have a crush on still, even though I'm being raped by his father. I'm still crushing on his oldest son. And, you know, and his wife, everybody is having a birthday party for Jan. And then he takes me home to Pocatello and he drops me off with a new sewing machine

and all these gifts. And my dad meets him. And it was painful. Anyway, and so I get in the parking lot of the mini dome, the big football stadium in Pocatello at ISU, Idaho State University, that's where they meet and Birchtold gets all the stuff out of the car. And as my dad gets out to take it, he's like, you can't keep this stuff. And he takes off and he leaves. And I'm like, yes, I can. It's all mine. Just I'm a bratty 14 year old. And then literally two weeks later, I crawl out my bedroom window. I stage a huge fight with my parents. I pack a backpack. I tell them I'm running away because I can't, you know, I write the letter exactly as it was dictated to me by Birchtold. I write it in my handwriting. doesn't sound like me. I misspell words. I write it exactly. I copied it, basically. And I'm a straight-a-student. I don't misspell words.

And I leave it, and I leave the backpack. I packed it as if I was going to take it with me. And then I crawl out my bedroom window, and he's right there on my street in a car. And he takes me a second time right there to help me out my window and has the car parked. And we drive in the dark down the street. I remember that, that there were no headlights on the car. And he takes me to California. And he puts me with a family that he's convinced or that he knew, maybe he knew as a good guy. I don't know if he knew them or found them through the Catholic Girls School that he enrolled me in. But school hadn't started yet. And so I stayed with this family for the first maybe 10 days, maybe 15, maybe two weeks. And that was when he went back to serve his sentence of 15 days in jail. And he's already kidnapped me the second time and leaves me with a family who they think. He's a CIA agent.

My mother's been killed in Lebanon. The whole thing. He's such a master of disguise. He enrolls you in this private Catholic boarding school to hide you. And he tells the boarding school this ridiculous story about him being a CIA agent and your mom getting killed in Lebanon. The fact that people believed what Birch told what the predator said, like, oh, okay, well, that sounds pretty dire CIA agent who's definitely not kidnapping a girl and bringing her to another place. we'll take care of this girl without asking any questions. It's just people just believe whatever crap came out of this guy's house.

If somebody tells you now in 2023, you would immediately call the police, pin the guy down in your office, and these morons just believe everything that comes up. You'd be like, this guy is a little girl. He says he's a CIA agent that their mom was killed in Lebanon. Come down here. He's obviously mentally ill, and we don't know where he got the girl. Right. That's what your reaction would be now.

And back then they're like, oh, we'll hide this child for you. Yeah, except that. he had papers that I was Janice Tobler. He had a birth certificate made. He was, you know, this guy, Tobler. He had a, I mean, he did all the stuff. I mean, he did all the, like, make the driver's license and do the birth certificate and all the things to enroll her in school. And then, of course, Jan is an actress. That's what I've been doing since I was six. I can act like my mother's died in Lebanon and, like, I'm a Catholic. I'll learn the prayers. I'll learn the rosary. I did it. I I, you know, in a day because I'm, I'm on both levels.

One, I'm scared to death, but I'm also important. I have a mission. We have to have this baby. We have to save a dying planet. Right. You know, I might have been naive and my parents might have been naive, but we weren't stupid people. We were just unaware that anything like this.

And I think those nuns at the Catholic Girl School were totally unaware that somebody could do something like this. He looked like. Like my father. Yeah. He looked like a CIA agent. He'd get on a, you know, sorry, I've got to go make a phone call. I got to call Jerry back, you know, Jerry Ford. I mean, that's the kind of thing.

It really is the fodder of great movie making, but my story is all real. It's all true. Yeah. It's like this guy took everything to the nth degree in manipulation and and brainwashing techniques and skills. And I've studied, you know, a lot of different, you know, ways that people are brainwashed and partly as if you can, if you can isolate someone and control their food and their water and when they can go to the bathroom, you can pretty much convince them of anything

with the right mechanism. You can, you can change a person's way of thinking quickly. You really can. And sympathetic investigators, they get a hold of the Predator's phone book or his phone bill somehow through like shady means, right? And they realize he's getting collect calls from different pay phones in a certain area. And they triangulate the schools. in that area, which is also quite brilliant, honestly. And they figure out where you are. I would imagine the school's reaction was quite intense when the FBI or the investigators came and said, do you have this girl who's being kidnapped?

They must have been like, oh, my God, we've helped this guy do this. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, a couple of the sisters, the nuns, came in the next trial that happens after this. I was there in the school for almost three months. I was missing in early August until Thanksgiving. It was right around that time, which is exactly the same time period that I was missing two years earlier. So this is like with a two years span in between.

And those nuns came and testified. But it took three visits from law enforcement and a private investigator and then the FBI for them to believe that they were the real people, not him. Because that's like that first teacher. You always hear that. teacher for your kids. You want them to learn about sex from you because if they learn it from somebody else, they'll learn it whatever way is taught to them first. Like, that's the real way. It's like a first impression of any kind, right? The first impression. And they totally thought that what he had told them is that people might

come and looking for my daughter, but they're pretending to be the police or whatever because if they can get a hold of her and torture her, then they know they can get to me because I would never let anything happen to her. So just call me immediately. If anyone comes looking for her because I'm high level, you know, and that's, so it took three times that they actually had to come before they had all the newspaper articles. I mean, I've been in every newspaper, you know, it's not like we have the internet, but we had the newspapers across the country looking for me the first time in his face and my face are in these newspapers and they're like, okay, yeah, that little girl is here, but her name is Janis Tobler, not Jam Broberg. Right. And that's how it happened, you know, and unfolded. And yes,

I was taken home after. And again, then I didn't talk to my parents at all for days and weeks and months. It was the worst time for my mom and dad is after the second time. This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Jan Broberg. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our sponsors. All of the deals, all the discount codes, all the ways to support the show, are at

Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. You can also search for any sponsor using the AI chat bot on the website at Jordan Harbinger.com. Thank you so much for supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Jan Broberg. The letters he's writing to you at this point are so creepy. I mean, it's something adults write to each other, not a 50-year-old man and a 13-year-old girl or 40-whatever-year-old man. It's just so bizarre. And, of course, he ends up arrested, and your family business burns down.

which is, you know, not a coincidence. So this psychopath, which really is what he is. I mean, he's just a very focused predator, psychopath, pedophile. Yeah. He is just, he's really intent on hurting your family as much as possible. Yeah, it's true. So he pays two guys that he's in the holding cell, basically a holding cell with two arsonists that are in for arson. This is, you know, early on, within months of this, of me coming home in late November,

this is in February of the following year that right there, like a few months later, and those two guys that are only in there for jail for a few months get out, and they do exactly what he paid him to do. And neither of them actually ever received any of the money, but they both, they went to jail. He didn't. They knew it was him. They told that it was him that told them how to do it,

where to go in the flower shop, to go down in the basement where the dad kept all the wrapping paper and all the supplies, all the, you know, wooden flowers, you know, the pods and the things that would burn, yeah. And that's where they started the fire. And it not only destroyed my father's flower shop, it destroyed the whole city block of Pocatello. There were like 12 businesses in that block. And they all, it doesn't even exist. The building has been torn to the ground because of the fire. It's so wild. I mean, and he poisons your dogs on, what, two separate occasions. He sends people to your of school at home to try and kidnap you again.

Who, like, just random people he's enrolled into his whatever fantasy or on their payroll. And I know at one point, you, you're going to this theater camp or whatever, and your plan was to kill yourself and kill your sister so that she didn't then have to sleep with him to complete the mission, right? Because was his, part of his leverage was if you don't complete it, your sister's going to have to do it and you didn't want him to hurt your sister. Is that accurate? Exactly.

Yes, there were all sorts of threats. My sister Karen would go blind if I did something wrong. My father would be killed or removed. My little sister would be taken in my stead. She would be my sister Susan. So, yeah, he had a threat for everybody. And they were coming from the aliens, of course, not from him, of course, because he loves my family. He loves my family. I would never do that. But those aliens, they'll definitely. Yeah, those aliens would do that. And, you know, he said, you just. have to know that your mom and dad are standing in the way of the mission. So you've just got to be very, very focused here because we've got to do this, what we can save this planet before your 16th birthday. Well, now I've had my 16th birthday while I'm at the theater camp. Two years later. So now I'm turning 16. I was turning 14 and kidnapped the second time right after that. Now I'm turning 16 at the theater camp. I'm supposed to get together with him. I'm supposed to see him. I'm out of town for five weeks. But there's other kids assigned to you. You have to have a buddy all

the time when you're on campus and going to class to class. So my 16th birthday comes and goes. I haven't been able to see him, hook up with him, whatever you want to call it. I'm now driving. I have a car, but I don't have it at the theater camp. My parents took me and came to pick me up to see the show. That's the what's at the end. It's this big show that the kids do. Well, during that week, right after my birthday, I'm 16 and I'm not vaporized yet. And basically, I will get little notes. Well, they've given us a little bit more time. He still is trying to, hook up with me. He's living in Salt Lake at this point. This camp is in Provo at BYU, and I'm a week away from the performance and the end of the camp. And in that week, my dogs get poisoned and my mom

calls, my mom and dad call me every night at the same time because, you know, it's a phone on the wall, right? It's a pay phone. And they tell me my dogs are sick and that they are at the vet and had had like little convulsions or something. I know that it's my fault. I know it's because this boy at the theater camp, you know, who bought me this ice cream cone because he was in front of me and I knew he liked me, but I didn't know what to do. He'd already bought it.

And I ran to my dorm room and I'm crying and my roommate's like, what's wrong with you? Right. So you think that since a boy was nice to you, you're going to get vaporized by aliens. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So when the dogs were poisoned and mom called and we had that conversation and I started crying. And she was like, I'm like, oh, it's my fault. Everything is my fault.

Just know it's my fault. Because I think I might be vaporized that night. I might not ever have anything else to say to her. And I've hardly spoken to my dad now for like four years, practically. Three years, it's been just really, it's been hard. And I feel that I'm carrying the weight of a world on my shoulders, literally this other planet. And my dogs are sick and maybe they're going to die because I did something wrong. and I hang up the phone and I just cry myself to sleep.

And, you know, after I go, of course, to my rehearsal that night, and then I come home and cry myself to sleep. I'm very dedicated to my craft. And the next morning, not typical, I get the, you know, the resident comes and says, you have a phone call. It's your mom. And that was not usual. And so I go, oh, no, something terrible has happened to somebody in my family.

But she called, she said, I just felt I should call you. Again, this is listening to your gut, moms and dads. I thought I should call you to tell you that the dogs are home and they're doing okay. And you were so upset. And it's not your fault that they got sick. I think maybe I fed them something bad, but they're okay. They're doing okay. I just wanted you to know they're going to be fine.

And at that moment, it was the first time, Jordan, in like four years, almost to the day of my first kidnapping. because this is early August and I was taken in October that I had a thought, oh my gosh, the dogs aren't dead because I'd already planned to tell my sister because I was turning 16. I knew where my dad had hid the gun that he had bought. We'd never had a gun before. My dad bought a gun after the first kidnapping. I knew where it was hidden. I had a plan. I would tell Susan if she didn't want to do the mission. I would kill her and then I'd kill myself. It was all planned out, but I had to finish the show at my theater camp first. And that moment of going, what if, what if this isn't real?

What if those voices? What if they aren't real? What if this is a made-up thing? What if I killed Susan and myself? I can't do that until I know it's real. The second thought after I'd hung up the phone with mom is, I'm just kidding, I'll do whatever you tell me to do. I know you can read my mind and my thoughts.

I don't know why I thought that. I know that you're real and you're watching me and I'll do everything you say. That was my second thought. I'd had the first thought. And I had never had a thought like that in all those years. So I go back to my theater camp, my mom and dad come to pick me up, we do the performance, it's awesome, I go home, I start school, and here comes September, and I'm testing the waters, and I'm talking to boys at school for the first time. I'm 16 years old. I barely, I accepted a date to go to a dance with a group. But the cousin of one of my dear friends, my dear friend Jan Hull,

at the time, had a cousin in town, and she set me up to go to this dance. She's like, Jan, you're 16 now. It's okay to go on a date. It's okay. And I accepted it. I hadn't done any of that. And I got home from that date. It was late and it was dark, but the porch light was on as it always was. I walked in the front door after saying good night to that boy and into my house. And right in the inside of my front door is where my dad's easy chair sits. And our living room is to the right and his easy chair is right there kind of almost by the door and the first words I heard I didn't know he was sitting there he was like oh Janney and I barely talked to my dad I've treated my dad like shit I've it's been so hard and so awful and he goes Janie how was it did you have a good time

and I sat on the arm of his easy chair and I said I did I had a really good time dad are you okay And dad's like, oh, of course, I'm fine. And I actually kind of put my head down and I gave him a little kiss on his forehead. Now, I had given him no affection for years. Sure. And I walked back to my bedroom past Susan's room. She was asleep. Mom was in bed and passed.

I didn't sleep downstairs anymore. I couldn't sleep in my bedroom down there. I didn't like it. And I just made them move me up into the den. And there was a bed in the den. And I went back to the den and just laid in my gunny sack dress and my platform shoes. on the bed, looking at the ceiling and thinking, nobody's died. Nobody's dead. Is this real? Is this not real? And then over the next couple of weeks is when I really started to go, okay, still nobody's dead. Nobody's blind.

And that was my sister. Yeah, my sister and my best friend, Caroline Hanson at the time, one night at a sleepover at our house, they started to ask questions. They'd found some notes and letters that I had kept in a pillow on this blue velvet hanging chair that Birch Toll had built for me when he built the wall in our bedroom downstairs to make two rooms out of our great big giant room where we slept together. And in my back bedroom, had the two windows, of course, that I had crawled out of.

They found some letters from him, some of those notes, those love notes. And they were like, what is this? Who's Zeta and Zethra? One of them said that. And I just screamed. I'm like, you can't know that. You're going to get hurt.

You're going to get hurt. And then, because I was still trying to make, I wasn't for sure, but they drew it out of me. They got it out of me. It was the scariest day of either of their lives. They said, we've never seen anything like it. It was like watching the exorcists happen on the floor as you clawed the floor and sobbed and screamed and then clawed the floor and told more little bits and pieces. And all night, we were up all night.

And that's how it came out the first time. Gosh, when you're manipulated like this from such a young age, how do you learn to trust other people ever again, especially since the predator was so close to you and close to your whole family. Well, it's a process for sure. And that's what I spend my work and my time doing now. I have an online community. And we basically come together as survivors of assault and abuse. And we talk about things like this. I think it's by getting some good therapists in your life. I think you also have to know that every person that comes into your life is not a predator. You have to believe it on a a brain level. You have to reprogram your neurosystem. You have to do the exercises that actually

fix the brain that your light in your brain for fear of being abused has been turned on. It is like a huge spotlight in your brain. Yeah, you're hypervigilant. So you have to learn and do certain things that are neurological, whether you do EMDR therapy. I think everyone should do that. I think they should have a good therapist, somebody to talk to. I think you have to find maybe one or two people that will actually believe you. So my foundation, the Jambrook Foundation and our online community is set on the tenets of, we believe you, we don't blame you, we won't judge you, you are safe here. And when people have a safe place to come and talk through what's happened to them, tell their story like I have many times throughout these years, my intention was to help

others and now I'm finally able to do that in a in a concrete way I'm developing and I have a 12-step basically it's like a 12-step program and if you can imagine AA and alan on the people that are traumatized you know through addiction and alcohol usually were traumatized in some sort of abusive way in their childhood before that almost always not always but almost always before somebody cuts before somebody's anorexic before somebody starts drinking before somebody is shooting the heroin in their arm, they've had some kind of an abuse as a child and they're self-medicating. And so our intention with Thrivevivers, our online community, is to bring together people that really need a group. They need an AA. They need a place for sexual assault survivors to gather,

to know they're safe, they're believed, and to be able to tell their stories, step one, telling, getting it outside of the body so that you can look at it and examine it. That's step one in coming to trust others again, but you have to get it out of you. You can't just pretend cancer doesn't exist and that you're going to be okay. You have to actually do the chemotherapy. You actually have to do something. Right. That's kind of what I work on now is in helping other people actually come together in a safe place where they're believed so that they can do step one through step 12. And I have basically a program that I, that I'm trying to, you know, get out there into the universe so that people can have happy relationships and trusting relationships and loving

relationships with themselves first, because the person you hate the most is yourself, which is completely misplaced. It happened to you. You were a kid. You were a child. You were a tween, a young person with not a fully developed brain. And yet we carry the shame. We carry the blame. So that has to be uprooted and examined and pulled out. It's like a weed. Shame is like this weed that you got to pull over and over again throughout your life when you've been through abuse. It's just, it just lives for whatever reason. It's such a shameful experience. It lives in you. So we do a lot of those kind of things. We work with memory experts and we work with therapists. Like you said, they're not your therapist, but we work with therapists just like, you know, your

introduction in your podcast is like, don't think that this is therapeutic. That's my thing. It's like, A, A, they don't claim to be giving you therapy, but you come to a place where others understand where you've been. And there's great things that can happen in that space when you make commitments to yourself and you go through those steps to actually do that thing, to trust. Broberg ends up stalking you and your family, actually, for years and years and years. How are you finally rid of this guy? Because the authorities, they're basically putting him in jail for a few weeks or few months and he gets out and he's back to his old tricks. Right. He's back to his old tricks. He found me in college. He found me when I took my first job as a

performer at Disney World. He found me and all these places. You know, that's where my son was born. My son who, you know, talk about it in generational trauma. My son has also struggled with the trauma of my abuse. It has passed through our DNA if we don't know how to address it sooner and faster. And that's why I hope people will try to address it not in their, I mean, address it in your 40s and 50s and 60s if that's when you're strong enough to get there. But if you can address it in your 20s, you know, before you have children, it would help because my son's also struggled with addiction. And it's been, you know, it's been a rough road to have four different, you know, his father, my first husband and then three other father figures in his life and have them

ripped away from him. And he suffered a lot of loss because of my abuse and what's happened to me. So to get back to your story, he did continue to contact me throughout my life in my college days when I took my first job before my son was born and then my son was born in Orlando, Florida. In that period of time, he got a hold of me. And then later, as I started to speak out about my story and my mom and I, she interviewed me and she wrote a book called Stolen Innocence, he showed up at a conference that I was giving to a thousand women and their daughters on this very story and this subject. That's crazy. A lot of nerve. Yeah, a lot of nerve. I mean, we had just published the book and, you know, didn't sell nearly enough copies to cover the cost, but we were trying to get the

story out and the message out. And he came to a conference and ended up after having contact me, you know, a dozen times throughout my adult life in various ways. There he was again at the campus, where I'm giving a speech and the police are there. And that's how I was on Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer and being interviewed again about this story long before I had a documentary or another book that was the full story and long before I had the series. I've been speaking out and speaking my story because I knew that others would be emboldened to tell theirs for all these years.

But he, I now know, I know two girls before me that were molested and raped by him. and I know four girls after me that were molested and raped. And there's many others, I'm sure I don't know. So when those statistics by the FBI, people go, well, that can't be true. I'm like, oh, it's absolutely true. And again, clear into the 2000s. So it wasn't because, oh, now we know what pedophiles are. It's because manipulators are really, really crafty and smart,

and they're con men and con artists, and you don't see it coming. They're catfishing you. How did this end with him? So after he showed up at this conference where I was speaking, he was arrested because he had brandished a firearm. Whoa. At one of the people outside on the campus. And the guy that he pointed the gun at and had these papers, he was trying to hand out. And we knew his current wife was in the conference because he had made threats to the university.

Like, you shouldn't have her talk. She's made this up. this story. And they went ahead with it, and we knew his wife was there because one of her daughters had stepped forward and said, well, he was doing the worst to us, and we ran away. And she was actually at the conference and could identify the woman who gave me life. She wouldn't even call her mother at the time. I don't know if she's come together at this point. But anyway, so we knew she was there. So the police were there and the campus police. And when he brandished the firearm, the guy knew exactly what it was, ditched the gun in a McDonald's garbage can outside.

And they eventually found it. And so he was tried and he was convicted. And it took almost two years. I mean, this didn't happen overnight. Again, everything goes so slow. And people are like, oh, my gosh. So during that time, because I had no idea that he was only living an hour away from where I was speaking at this. conference and he'd seen my picture on a poster and he knew there was a book and he had threatened my mother at

her workplace in Idaho. My mother had become a social worker. She went back to college after all of her daughters graduated from college, became a social worker and he was putting flyers on all of her workers' cars and all around Pocatello. This is in the 2000s. I mean, this is years later. And basically he was convicted on three felony charges and two misdemeanors, nothing to do with raping little girls, but having a firearm, he was a registered sex offender, hadn't registered, a bunch of things like that. He was found guilty again. And then he was released because he was going to be sentenced a month later. It was the holidays and he had a heart condition. So he was released into the care of the Nevada police to take him to his home. And he lived in Nevada, in Logandale, Nevada.

And as he crossed over the border, he was in his own truck with the police escort. He took off. And as the Utah police were passing him on to the Nevada police and he went up into a campground in the hills and he took a bottle of pills and washed it down with a bottle of Kalua. Wow. And killed himself. I don't even think he meant to die. I think he wrote these little tiny suicide notes to his kids. I feel sorry for all of them. That's what I can't imagine having this person as your father. You think you did it for its entrance and he ended up dying? I do because he tried before, which I know because the district attorney called me, before it was public knowledge that he had died. He said we found these little short two or three sentence suicide notes that, well, everybody's against me. Once again, I'm being wrongly accused, you know. Oh, my gosh. Didn't even write anything about other people, like pure psychopath, narcissistic,

predator. This guy didn't have a honest bone in his body. Oh, I know you touched on this a little bit earlier. And most people, they hear the stories from when you were a kid because that's the dramatic, true crimey stuff. But how has this all affected you as an adult? You mentioned you had four marriages. It affected your relationship pattern. But I'm curious, what about in terms of raising your own children? I know your son Austin, he's a show fan.

I know he's mentioned that these events have affected him personally and deeply as well. Yeah, and I think that that's something that when they talk about intergenerational trauma and how that trauma that lives in your body, if you don't know how to shut it off, if you don't know how to have a trusting relationship or a good relationship, and you're maybe not looking for love in all the right places, and you're, you missed out on all that natural development. You didn't get to have that as a 12, 13, 14, 14, 15, 16 year old. You have arrested development. There are things you didn't get to learn because you weren't there. You know, you were in a different state. And so I as an adult now feel like I have finally maybe crossed some bridges that

I didn't know about in my 20s and 30s that I've slowly learned more and more. I've read a lot of books. I listened to a lot of podcasts myself. I listened to books on tape quite a bit. And I also had the advantage of having some like Oprah. She would say the real words back in the day when we never talked about these things. And that was like a huge thing. And one of the things that doesn't have anything to do with, you know, saying the right words, but it has to do with a thing that she taught on one of her shows about a gratitude journal. And it's something that really resonated with me. And it was something that I grew up with in my home. My father was a person that always had, you know, a funny saying or just a nice saying, but, you know, he'd say him in a funny

voice so that we would all remember them. And they were like the mantra of our life. Like every day is a bonus or, you know, two things. I love you. And the gospel's true or, you know, he'd say, you know, thanks a million, wish I had it. He'd say these things that always stuck in our minds, like, you know, the glass really is, half full, not empty, gratitude and attitude, they're directly related. And those sorts of sayings and that little gratitude journal idea from Oprah literally has saved my life. And so it's one of my steps in the program that I've created. It's really understanding. if you can change your traumatic experience from something that is your drama and your story

that affects you in a negative way into something that is positive and that you can be grateful for, you really know at that point, like, I'm grateful, even as weird as it might sound, that I had these experiences because of who I am today, and they do form who we are. I don't have to be grateful. A person doesn't have to like the person, but I had to. to forgive the person in order for me to move forward. So letting go of certain things and moving forward with my life, knowing I am the creator of my life and my reality and my every day, every minute of my life is hugely empowering. If I can help a million other survivors know that

and do that, then what I went through was worth it. If I can help two billion, there's two billion survivors of sexual assault and abuse that are walking the planet today right now. Two billion around the globe. Just based on the numbers, right? Just based on the numbers, the stats. So if I were able to help a fraction of those people at least know that they aren't to blame, that their story, it matters, and that they can move on from their story into a life that they can create and love.

And even if it's not perfect, my life was not perfect. My life was not perfect. Like you said, I've been married. Four times I've been through, you know, Birch told coming back into my life, I've been through my son, like you were talking about that generational trauma, who, it didn't start with heroin, but it's where it's where it ended. And so to go through those years, those many years, and knowing that part of that was just never having security in his life, I want to help.

other people find that sooner. How can you find yourself, your empowerment, your security, your trust, your love that's the right, the good kind of love that you have to work on with another person that isn't harmful to you, that isn't harming your loved ones? Those are the things that I believe are robbed from children of physical, mental, emotional, and especially sexual abuse. And so that's sort of what happens in going through those marriages. I've gained and lost, you know, stepdaughters and people that I wanted in my life, but my own suffering or my own trauma got in the way, you know, because of choices that I made and they weren't healthy choices.

And I think if I can help somebody avoid some of the aftermath of abuse, then that might, you know, make it all worthwhile, I guess. That's how I've pictured it. So writing my, you know, the book that I have and, and doing the podcast that I do on Survivor Stories and on experts in the field. I try to get with people that talk about the neuroscience of the brain, that talk about, you know, how can you change your ever-present voice of negativity in your head? How do you change it? How do you quiet it? How do you make it go. There are things you can do to actually make a huge impact and change your life. And that's what I want to do for people. And so that's the kind of thing that I work on now. But yeah, it's affected my family members. It absolutely has. It's affected my relationships

with various people. But almost always I've been able to come back around to having those relationships be healed to a degree. I'm very curious, you know, you've got the series on Peacock. It's doing well. You had the series on Netflix that did really well, there must have been fallout from this. Because, you know, when you see Netflix, if you don't give it a second thought, what you think is, look at these idiots letting their daughter get abused. These are terrible people. They were probably in on it. What a bunch of knuckleheads. I would imagine that this is, and talking with Austin, your son has let me know. Like, I spoke with him on the phone, and he's like, you know, one of the reasons he wanted me to

interview you is because he knows how I do my interviews. But also I said, you know, I just, I'm, I have such a hard time blaming your parents because even though they're just naive to the point where I want to smack them, they're not evil people. Yeah. But it's very hard to come to that conclusion. You really have to sit there and think about it and weigh all the evidence because they look like total negligent morons when you, and I'm sorry, these are your parents. But they look so bad in the series because they let you be abused by this guy and they let

themselves be abused by this guy. Yeah. And I guess there is a point where every person has to come to that willingly to say, okay, I did not see something that I think I should have seen. I think, and my parents have definitely come to that point. They've apologized to me and tried to make it up to me in as many ways as they could. And to then also take all of the mistakes that they made forward to the whole world so that people could, you know, put them under a microscope and say such awful things about them

was incredibly brave because most of us don't. tell our worst things. You know, most of us don't tell the time when we got conned out of $200,000. Most of us don't tell the time that, oh, yeah, I left that. I actually did suffer basically an abuse or a rape because I did these things. I was drunk or, you know, whatever we think is our worst moment of not seeing the con artist, of not seeing the predator behind the narcissistic, you know, smile that got us to marry them. And then we don't often tell about our affairs. You know, oh, I had an affair. We don't talk about things on our worst days. We don't. And my parents did. And so for me, I just, all I can say to everyone is that most people are naive with the people

closest to them. So I guess that's what I have to say about, yes, naive, yes. Yes, yes, maybe. You know, it can look that way. But when somebody spends three years grooming you into being their best friend, you don't see it coming. You don't see it. Jan Broberg, thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it, Jordan.

You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Amanda Katarzi, who was raised in a cult and later sex and labor trafficked. The women were trained to be insanely submissive. like you could never say no to any man. And then the men were trained in a very military way. These people are well-armed and well-trained. And it's a whole group that thinks that the world is evil and they need to repopulate the world with their people

to bring the kingdom of God. When you turn 13 in that culture, you're an adult. So to be 13 years old, being courted by men twice my age, three times my age, to see if I would make a good wife, It was just kind of outrageous. So I moved to California to go to school, and I start training in MMA. And my trafficker was there. He was actually one of my boxing coaches.

Then he's like, you know, I like you. And so now we're dating. So this is my first adult relationship. He's twice my age at this point. And then he would always take me up to his cabin on the mountain, which was really far away from everybody else. No phone service, isolation. And it was on a Native American reservation. So whatever they wanted to do to me, they could.

Oops, you accidentally got gang raped. That was very common of going to go train. And then all of a sudden, now that you fought 12 rounds, now you're going to be raped. A girl ran a red light and teabone my truck. So I pull out my phone and I text my trafficker and I say, hey, I almost just died a car accident. He said, is your face fucked up? And I'm like, no. He said, well, you're still fuck a boy.

then. Something isn't right here. This isn't who I want to be. This isn't what I want, and it was like I was coming out of water. I had this moment of clarity, and I knew something wasn't right, and I knew this wasn't what I wanted, and I knew I needed to act fast in order to get out of that situation, because I knew it'd get sucked back in. To hear how she escaped her dire situation, check out episode 631 of the Jordan Harbinger show. What a story, man. I remember seeing this on Netflix, and if you haven't heard this before, I think the question that's probably on your mind is, how could her parents let this happen over and over again?

How could they be so naive? Well, conservative way of life, really restrictive religious community. The guy was also an expert abuser, expert manipulator. Nobody ever talked about this sort of thing in that community at that time. And all the weird alien stories used to manipulate the secret hidden cassette player. I mean, this guy really did go kind of above and beyond. And remember, the parents were groomed too. This guy was a successful father of five, not some random creep.

He really managed to weasel his way into the church community, to the family. And dang, if it wasn't just so clear that there's no mental health care or counseling or child abuse laws back then, wow, we, I just, it's staggering to think what went on and just was lightly frowned upon, if anything, I mean, just absolutely wild. I'm thinking this predator was likely a high-functioning psychopath and, of course, a pedophile. Few people have that level of focus when it comes to harassing one particular person or family. And I know he had other victims, but man, this guy really expended a ton of energy with this. As a father, I really related mostly to the father in this story.

And there were times where I just had to pause the audiobook because the pain that he went through being unambiguous. able to protect his kids losing his wife, his relationships falling apart, all as a result of this predator because he was a good person and because he trusted other people, it's really just heartbreaking. I know that there's just no way that this guy ever forgave himself for any of this because I don't think I would. And I don't think I have to say this to you all listeners here of the Jordan Harbinger show, but I'm going to say it because I know that this family, the Brobergs, had a ton of problems after the Netflix documentary aired. Don't troll these people. They're all victims. They've had enough. I know Jan is really tough. But at the same time, I know they put up with a lot of blame.

Like I said, when this Netflix thing came out. And it was just, it's really shameful. People went after them really hard. And I know you guys are a lovely caring bunch because I see the emails in my inbox, but the reminder never hurts. And, you know, I'll also say, it is really easy to blame other people and say, well, this had never happened to me. I would never be this dumb. I would never be this naive, I would have done something differently. We do this because it makes us feel superior and it makes us feel immune to the types of influence that these people were victims of. And you might be right. Maybe you wouldn't fall for this, but I think it's much easier to say that than to put yourselves in the shoes of other people. And that's what I think we should do here on this show is try to

put ourselves in their shoes with their life experience and see if we really would have made different decisions. Maybe we would have. But then again, maybe not. Big thank you to Jan Broberg, all things Jan will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Our chat GPT bot is at Jordan Harbinger.com. You can search for anything in any show, any feedback Friday, any promo code for any sponsor, Jordan Harbinger.com slash AI. Transcripts in the show notes, videos on YouTube, advertisers, deals, discount codes, all ways to support the show are going to be over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using software,

systems, tiny habits, the same stuff that I use every single day. That's our six-minute networking course, and that course is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty, build relationships before you need them, and many of the guests on the show. Subscribe and or contribute to the course. So, hey, come join us. You'll be in smart company.

This show has created an association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who needs to hear the story or would, maybe I hate to say get a kick out of this story, but just find it as fascinating as I did or you did. Share this episode with him. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

So, in the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast, focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think,

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