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May 9, 2023 | 6:26 a.m
An Indiana family who adopted a teenage girl from Ukraine but later claimed she was an “adult posing as a child to harm her family” speaks out about the ordeal 13 years later.
“We’ve all been abused,” yells father Michael Barnett in the trailer for an upcoming Investigation Discovery documentary. “I hate that.”
Michael Barnett and his then-wife Kristine Barnett adopted what they believed to be a 6-year-old girl named Natalia in April 2010 who suffered from a rare form of dwarfism called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita.
But the family soon questioned her age after dealing with allegedly violent behavior.
“She tried to poison and kill my wife,” Michael Barnett said in the trailer for the documentary The Curious Case Of Natalia Grace.
“One night I opened my eyes and Natalia was standing at the foot of the bed with a knife in her hand.”
In 2012, the parents applied to a court to legally change Natalia’s year of birth from 2003 to 1989, which was granted, changing her age from 8 to 22.
The family then moved to Canada with their biological children, where their eldest son would begin college.
Natalia was accused of pretending to be a young 6-year-old girl at the time of her adoption – but it was later revealed she was an adult. investigation discovery
The alleged girl’s parents ended up in hot water in 2013 when it was discovered Natalia was living alone in an apartment in Lafayette, Indiana, prompting an investigation and her arrest.
In 2019, the now-divorced couple faced charges of neglecting a loved one.
“The media paints me as a child molester, but there is no child here,” Kristine Barnett told the Chron in 2019.
Michael and Kristine Barnett adopted Natalia from Ukraine, but soon questioned her real age after a string of alleged acts of violence. investigation discovery
“Natalia was a woman. She had periods. She had adult teeth,” she added in the interview.
“She never grew an inch, which would happen even to a child with dwarfism.
The doctors all confirmed that she was suffering from a serious mental illness that has only been diagnosed in adults.”
The father said Natalia tried to poison and kill his wife in the trailer for the documentary The Curious Case Of Natalia Grace. investigation discovery
Michael Barnett was eventually found not guilty by a jury in 2022, and Kristine Barnett had dropped all her charges in March of that year.
Both parents previously said the charges were false, citing Natalia is an adult and not a neglected child.
The documentary, a three-part series that premieres May 29 on three consecutive nights with Investigation Discovery, will feature “bombshell interviews with members of Natalia’s adoptive family” including Michael Barnett and his son Jacob Barnett, as well as legal experts, friends and neighbors, according to a press release from Investigation Discovery.
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