Jan Broberg was 12 years old when she woke up with her arms and legs tied to a bed in a motorhome in the Mexican desert.
A recorded voice explained that aliens had chosen her to save their dying planet: she had to meet a man and have a child with him, or her little sister would be kidnapped. That man was Robert Berchtold, a close friend of her family in Idaho, a churchgoing man who had also manipulated Jan’s parents for months.
Berchtold maintained that science-fiction story to abuse and control her without anyone suspecting. The FBI found her five weeks later, but Jan kept the abuse secret out of fear. Only at 15, after a school date that triggered none of the announced catastrophes, did she begin to understand that it had all been a lie. Berchtold served barely 15 days in prison for the kidnapping, rape, and abuse of other minors, and took his own life before hearing the sentence for stalking her again.