A man from Indiana, USA, who adopted a six-year-old girl from Ukraine – only to later claim she was an adult masquerading as a child – is speaking about the bizarre case 13 years later in an upcoming documentary.
Michael Barnett and his then-wife, Kristine Barnett, adopted a girl named Natalia from Ukraine in 2010. They believed her to be a six-year-old orphan, but soon began to question her age as she became increasingly violent.
“We were all abused,” Michael Barnett said in the trailer of ‘The Curious Case Of Natalia Grace’, alleging that their 6-year-old ward was actually a 22-year-old woman suffering from dwarfism.
In the same trailer, Michael further alleged that Natalia tried to poison him and his then-wife, Kristine. “She tried to poison and kill my wife,” he recalled. “One night, I opened my eyes and Natalia is standing at the foot of the bed with a knife in her hand.”
The Barnetts were convinced that Natalia was an “adult masquerading as a child with intent to harm their family. In 2012, barely two years after they adopted her, the Indiana-based family petitioned to legally change Natalia’s birth year from 2003 to 1989, according to Fox News. Their request was granted by the court, which meant Natalia’s age went from six to 22.
The Barnetts then moved to Canada with their biological children, leaving Natalia behind in Indiana. She was discovered living alone in an apartment for which the Barnetts had paid rent in advance for a year, according to BBC.
In 2019, the couple was charged with neglect of a dependent. “Natalia was a woman. She had periods. She had adult teeth,” Kristine said at the time in an interview with the Daily Mail. “She never grew a single inch, which would happen even with a child with dwarfism. The doctors all confirmed she was suffering a severe psychological illness only diagnosed in adults.”
Michael was found not guilty in 2022, while the charges against Kristine were dismissed this year.
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