Abducted in Plain Sight -- Film Review
Abducted in Plain Sight
Directed by Skye
Borgman
This film is both ridiculous on the one hand, but very
instructive on the other. It illuminates
the malaise and hideousness of American sexual culture and illustrates how
various powerful elements in American culture come together to transform the
personal lives of ordinary Americans into scenes of carnage.
The film recounts the story of a 38 year old man's sexual
obsession with a twelve year old girl and his involvement with her family. They were from Mormon background. My interest is not in recounting the details
of the relationship or attempting to give an analysis of the motivations and
behaviors. This could be done, and it
might have some interest, but my focus on this matter is mainly cultural. There are thousands of similar stories and
relationships going on every day in America.
Sexual interest in young children is a widespread phenomenon. Every day there are scandals and arrests
reported in the news media. If it were
not so severely persecuted in this society, it would probably be nearly universal.
I am not interested in why an adult man (or woman) would
find a preadolescent child sexually interesting. I don't see that as problematic. People have always found children sexually
interesting and have sought to include them in their sex lives or introduce
them to sexual experiences, in the same way that we introduce children to
everything else we are interested in and enjoy.
We naturally wish to share with our children activities that we enjoy
and find satisfying, such as shooting guns, playing football, boxing, driving
cars, drinking, and smoking. There is
nothing wrong with any of that, is there?
This taboo that modern western societies place on sex and children is a
very strange aberration in the history of human culture. For me, it is the cultural prohibition, its
severity, and the prosecutorial stance of society toward these relationships
that is problematic, and not the desires themselves. The "child molester," the
"pedophile," the "pervert," the "predator," are
all bogeymen that have been created in order to simplify perception and justify
blind hatred. They do not describe real
people and real relationships. I am more
interested in the pathology of a society that needs a fantastic monster it can
hate without restraint. A social need to
vent the most extreme viciousness on isolated, troubled, mostly defenseless
individuals on account of their love interests is much more intriguing to me
than the desires of a lonely, troubled individual trying to resolve an inner
need within himself.
The film did not focus on Robert Berchtold's background or
personal psychology. No attempt was made
to explain or understand him. He was
portrayed somewhat sympathetically up until the last stages of the film when
they gave in to the cultural need to demonize him. But at one point a prison psychiatrist's
understanding of Berchtold's behavior was summarized and I think that
psychiatrist's grasp of Berchtold's motivation was accurate. From a psychiatric point of view there is
nothing inherently wrong with Berchtold's desires. He is just trying to solve a fundamental
problem within himself, to remedy a deep seated psychological deficiency in his
upbringing. It is not something to be
criminalized.
The film did not delve into the homosexual relationship
between Berchtold and Bob Broberg. It
was portrayed as a single incident, but I am skeptical of this
reconstruction. There was enough of a
sexual relationship going on between both parents and Berchtold that they gave
the green light to Berchtold's sexual affair with their twelve year old
daughter. Berchtold's intrusion into the
sexual life of this family probably propped up a marriage that was
deteriorating. Twelve year old Jan was
the price for that infusion of support and excitement, and she became
enthralled with her role and her relationship with Berchtold.
However, there was conflict.
It came from the ideology of the Mormon church to which they all
belonged, which imposed a negative judgment on this whole arrangement. Interestingly, the Mormon church does not
seem to disapprove of the relationship between the twelve year old Jan and the
38 year old Berchtold. But it does not
condone the extramarital sex and homosexuality that played an important part in
the whole matrix. Additionally, parents
are often disapproving of the sexual and romantic choices of their offspring
going all the way back to Romeo and Juliet, who were about 13 or 14 years old
at the time of their affair. Sexual
relations between adult males and young children lacking the approval of the
parents will always be problematic and probably persecuted. In former times that approval was often quite
readily forthcoming. In this case, Berchtold
correctly perceived an opportunity with this family and exploited it. The family is trying to pose as naive,
innocent, stupid, brainwashed victims of a cunning predator, but let's be
real. This happened in plain sight with all of their participation -- sexual
participation. They were not naive
victims. They were getting something out
of it: first and foremost the sexual thrills as well as a revitalization of a
faltering marriage.
There were things wrong with Robert Berchtold, mentally and
behaviorally. He was not an exemplary
person. The sexual relationship with the adolescent Jan improved his life and improved him. However, he got worse with the intrusion of the legal and criminal
apparatus into the matter. The psychotic elements intensified as well as
threats of violence. If the police, the FBI, and the prosecutorial
forces had left them alone, this whole matter would not have taken the tragic
turn that it did. It would have run its
course; it would certainly have left its mark on all of their lives, but they
all would have been able to continue to live relatively benign lives each to
themselves. Psychiatric counselors may have been some help, if they were
sympathetic. But it is the institutional
intrusion and criminalization of these emotional affairs that raised the stakes
and intensified the adversarial feelings and rage. Who are the villains in this film? Pete Welsh, the FBI agent who thinks he's the
good guy, the prosecutors, and the entire condemnatory cultural mindset that
injected itself in a persecutorial way against this couple and their
families. I exclude the parents from
this category, although they created difficulties for the couple after
encouraging them and enabling them at the outset. Parents are entitled to be parents and
families always have conflicting perceptions, interests, and understandings of
a situation. This is something inherent
to every family and is not nefarious in and of itself. The real turpitude in this drama is the
philosophical condemnation from legal and institutional authorities and their
readiness to intervene in a forceful, destructive manner. The persons within those institutions
carrying out this enforcement are the true bad actors.
The film amounts to an exercise in myth making. It is an awkwardly constructed piece of
propaganda. This family is now --thirty years later --
casting itself as the innocent victims of a malevolent predator instead of the
conflicted, but enthusiastic participants that they were. This marriage was troubled, as was Berchtold. There was a fit that Berchtold perceived and
aggressively pursued. Now, thirty years
later, they wish to repudiate it and say it was all wrong. I don't buy it, and I don't accept the
socially acceptable reconstruction of themselves that they are now trying to
pass off.
One telling moment in the film was toward the end at the
trial of Berchtold where Jan confronts him and tells him how he harmed
her. Berchtold apologized for the hurt
he had caused and asked her if she could forgive him. She refused and retorted that he should make
his recompense by going to jail. The
apology and the refusal to accept it were both disingenuous. Berchtold knew he had nothing to apologize
for and so did Jan. The apology was
tongue in cheek, mocking Jan for demanding it, all the while remembering the
hundreds of times they enjoyed sex together with Jan's enthusiastic
responsiveness. This is also why Jan
cannot accept the apology. She knows she
is being mocked and her hypocrisy and mendacity is being plainly thrown back in
her face.
The best evidence of this hypocrisy is visible through the
metamorphosis in the character of Jan.
As a young girl Jan's eyes are bright and shining, her smile is broad
and enthusiastic. She is full of
enthusiasm and love for her lover. She
is defiant of her parents. She is
willful. She stands by her love with
strength and determination. As a
teenager she rebelled against her mother.
She insisted on keeping her lover against the strong opposition of her
family. When she was coerced onto an
airplane and forcibly brought back to her family from southern California, she
refused to speak to her mother. She went
into a stupor, sulking in her room for days and weeks. (Forcibly dragging a kid back to her parents
is not called kidnapping, but when she willingly leaves with her lover and
hides of her own volition from her parents, it is.) She shut herself down emotionally. She was enraged that she was ripped away from
her passion and her ultimate concern.
She wasn't the same girl that her parents had known before. Of course not. Passionate love transforms a person, and Jan
had grown emotionally and sexually from the naive girl that her parents
raised. Jan's behavior after being
forcibly brought back home illustrates the inadequacy of the emotional
environment in her birth home and the lack of understanding her parents had for
her and her true inner feelings.
Contrast this obstreperous, sexually awakened young girl
with the mature Jan of 30 years later at the time of the filming. Gone is the flashing light in her eyes, gone
is the untrammeled smile, gone is the passion and the sexual appeal. She has become effete and apologetic,
attempting to pose as a martyr and a victim, turning on her old lover, accusing
him of "predation" and "abuse." She has become despicable. The young Jan was far more appealing, far
more attractive, far more alive, than Jan as a mature woman. She has been poisoned, first and foremost by
her mother, who composed the book that they wrote and promoted, and secondarily
by the legal system that condemned her relationship and applied its power and
reach to destroy it. In her contemporary
pose, Jan has fully surrendered to her mother.
Gone is that wonderful rebellious girl standing her ground and fighting
for the truth of her own heart. Jan as a mature woman is taking the only course
left open to her, namely, that of the abused victim. This restores her acceptability in society,
and it gives her the possibility of cashing in on her personal tragedy. The result is that the book and this film
lose their credibility in their later stages.
When they begin to apply judgment and perspective is when the hypocrisy
and pretense take precedence. Now she
accepts her mother's version of events, she supports her mother's book,
Berchtold was forced to suicide. Ding
Dong, the Wicked Witch has won a total victory.
Jan had been fortunate to have a lover that she could love
and feel passionate about early in her life.
It enabled her to develop emotionally and sexually at a much earlier age
than most of her peers . It is known
that most sexual encounters and relationships between children and adults occur
between people who know each other well: family members, neighbors, teachers,
clergy, counselors. The malevolent
stranger who is used as a bogeyman in propaganda promoted by schools and
churches is relatively rare. Such cases,
when they occur, are highly publicized, but they do not characterize the sexual
experiences of the vast majority of children.
The abuse industry has taken over the personal lives of American
people. It prevents them from developing
naturally in their emotional and sexual selves.
All personal relationships between children and adults, children and
other children, and even among adults who work in the same environment are cast
in terms of "abuse," "exploitation," and
"predation." Every personal
interest one might take in another person has a pall of suspicion cast over
it. We've incentivized victimization to
an unprecedented extent. This film is a
good illustration of that tendency and the great lie that it represents
characterizing these relationships as "abusive" and
"exploitative." The passionate
love letters exchanged between Jan and Berchtold are clear evidence of this, that
contradict all claims of "abuse," "kidnapping," and
"exploitation." One of the
good points of the film is that it presents this first hand evidence that belies the judgment it is ultimately trying to
impose on the whole matter.
So while this film is ultimately disappointing in that it
finally adopts the usual negative stance toward the relationship it is
depicting, it presents enough of the truth and the testimony of the girl
herself through her hand written letters and her frank testimony as an adult
about the affair that one can see through its propagandistic tenor. The key is in noting the contrast between the
character of Jan as a mature adult woman in her 50s and the passionate, defiant
young girl who carried on the affair as a youngster. Her later pose as a victim is not convincing,
and the haunted shell of a woman that she has become is a sad legacy of the
destruction wreaked upon her life by her mother, especially, and the legal
system that thwarted, persecuted and ultimately destroyed the loving intimacy
she had with Robert Berchtold.