Who Is Natalia Grace? What Happened to Natalia Grace?

Imagine you adopt a little kid to give them a better life, but find out a horrifying truth later on- it’s an adult living in a child’s body. From then on, you stop living a peaceful life. The adult turns out murderous and sociopathic and then begins a game of hide and seek to save one’s life.

While the 2009 film, The Orphan, dealt with this eerie issue, just a year later, in 2010, something similar happened again, and this time for real.

An adoption went wrong, and that ultimately destroyed the sanity and the marriage of the couple. Murder threats, hostage situations, violence, and more became the normal behavior of the ‘child’ they had brought home.

An alleged adult woman, Natalia Grace, passing as a six-year-old, was adopted by Kristine and Michael Barnett in 2010. But after bringing her home, the couple realized that she was in her 20s. They claimed that Grace was violent and showed sociopathic tendencies. Her parents abandoned her in a Lafayette apartment, and later on, social services got involved. A case of dependant neglect was filed against the Barnetts, but both were found not guilty.

Who Is Natalia Grace? Did She Try to Murder Her Adoptive Parents?

ID premiered a new documentary titled The Curious Case of Natalia Grace on May 29. Containing three episodes, the documentary aims to untangle the controversy and misinformation around the titular woman. In the teaser for the docuseries, a woman says, “If you watch the Orphan, it’s just like the Orphan.” This case seems to be quite similar indeed.

In 2010, Kristine and Michael Barnett, hailing from Indiana, adopted Natalia Grace, who they thought was a little 6-year-old Ukrainian girl suffering from dwarfism. The Barnetts claimed that the agency they used for the adoption gave them a mere 24 hours to choose. Generally, an adoption process is way longer.

But the couple ignored their common sense because they were worried about Grace’s future. Problems began once they brought her home. Allegedly, Grace began displaying violent and strange behavior. They noticed that the girl kept hoarding knives and threatened to kill her family, including the couple’s three biological sons.

It seems like her threats were real because the Barnettss found her looking at them with a knife in her hand from the end of their bed at night. She also allegedly placed thumbtacks facing up on the stairs so that her family would step on them. That’s not the end of it, and it gets worse.

The adoptive parents claimed that Grace had tried to poison Kristine, her mother, by mixing cleaning products in coffee. Also, they alleged that she had tried to drag her mother to an electric fence. If this wasn’t enough, the Barnetts noticed something more unusual.

What Is the Truth About Natalia Grace’s Age?

Kristine and Michael Barnett noticed something very unusual about Natalia soon after bringing her to their home. They claimed to have noticed her having a menstrual cycle as well as pubic hair, something that’s not normal in a six-year-old girl. The couple consulted a doctor who told them that the girl was actually a woman and a sociopathic con artist.

In 2012, they petitioned the Marion County Probate Court to legally change her age to 22. This would put her birth year from 2003 to 1989.

Natalia has a condition called Spondyloepiphyseal that doesn’t let her body grow. As a result, she can pass as a child. It’s a form of dwarfism that affects the spine and the long arms of hands and legs.

In 2013, the couple shifted their family to Canada without Natalia, who they left in Lafayette. She stayed in an apartment, living on food stamps, till neighbors and social services intervened. The Barnetts, who divorced later on, were charged in 2019 with dependent neglect.

Prosecutors couldn’t charge them with child neglect because of the legally sanctioned age change. Both of them were eventually found not guilty of the charges. But what does Natalia say about the entire situation?

Natalia Grace Claims She Was a Kid When the Barnetts Abandoned Her

During an interview with Dr. Phil in 2019, Natalia Grace claimed that she was adopted at six years of age and abandoned at 8-years. She also said that she was a teenager, only 16, during her appearance on Dr. Phil and not 30 as the court records claimed. Grace appeared on the show with Antwon and Cynthia Mans, who she had been placed with by authorities.

The couple stated that they didn’t have any problems with her and vouched for her. They said that she loves her nephews and siblings. Overall, it’s certainly a highly unusual adoption case that’s still debated.

The Curious Case of Natalia Grace is on ID Discovery.

What are your thoughts about this convoluted case? Did the Barnetts do the right thing by abandoning Natalia Grace? Or is she telling the truth?

Let us know in the comments below.

Source: Dr. Phil