Real life: Is Natalia a vulnerable six-year-old orphan or a sociopathic adult?

When Kristine Barnett and her husband Michael decided to adopt, they thought they’d found the perfect child in six-year-old Natalia Grace.

The couple, who already had three sons but couldn’t have more children due to health complications, welcomed Natalia, who had dwarfism, into their home in May 2010. But although they had been told she was a Ukrainian-born orphan, they soon started to suspect this was false and that something sinister was going on.

Kristine, 45, alleges that Natalia was, in fact, an adult whose extreme mental health issues led her to try to kill the family – pouring bleach into Kristine’s coffee, hiding knives in the sofa, and threatening to stab them in their sleep.

By 2012, Natalia was placed into a psychiatric unit and Kristine and Michael, 43, were told that this young child was in fact a 22-year-old sociopath.

But, in yet another twist, Kristine and Michael are now reportedly facing charges of dumping a disabled adult and of child neglect. After Natalia was discharged from the unit, they left her to live alone in a rented apartment in Indiana, USA, before the rest of the family moved to Canada. Now, Kristine and Michael both face lengthy prison sentences.

The bizarre case has been compared to the 2009 horror film Orphan, in which a couple adopt a “nine-year-old girl” who turns out to be a murderous 33 year old.

Kristine and now ex-husband Michael agreed to take in Natalia in an “emergency adoption”. They were told the girl was six and had been born in the Ukraine on 4 September, 2003. Aside from this sparse information, all they knew about the girl was that her previous adoptive parents had given her up, for reasons unknown.

The couple, who already had three sons – Jacob, now 21, Wesley, 18, and Ethan, 15 – felt they could offer the perfect home for the youngster, having been experienced foster parents. Kristine had been lauded for her skills in parenting children with special needs, as Jacob had been diagnosed with autism aged two and was told he’d never

be able to walk or talk, but his mother home-schooled him, and nurtured his incredible talent for maths. Jacob has an IQ higher than Einstein’s and was accepted into university aged 10.

Kristine even wrote a book about Jacob’s journey and developed a learning approach for other children like him.

She and Michael were desperate to have a big family, but complications in pregnancy meant Kristine was unable to have more children, so they decided to adopt Natalia.

In an interview, Kristine said, “I felt that if I had the ability to help another person in the world then I wanted to do it.”

The family welcomed Natalia, but Kristine claims she quickly noticed something unusual about her. Kristine said, “I was giving her a bath and I noticed that she had full pubic hair. I was shocked. I had been told she was a six year old, but it was very apparent she was not.”

Natalia shunned dolls, preferred the company of older girls and used a sophisticated vocabulary. And, while she was said to be from Ukraine, she could not understand Ukrainian and was unable to describe her homeland.

Suspicious, Kristine asked their family doctor to help establish Natalia’s true age and a bone density test was carried out, which suggested she was at least 14. As her age was questioned, Natalia’s mental health deteriorated. Kristine said, “She would stand over people in their sleep and say, ‘I’m waiting for the right time…’”.

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Then her actions became even more disturbing.

Kristine said, “She was jumping out of moving cars, smearing blood on mirrors – doing things you could never imagine a child doing.”

By 2011, Natalia was taken into psychiatric care. A year later, Kristine and Michael applied to a judge in Indiana to correct Natalia’s age so she could receive psychiatric help as an adult. A judge decided Natalia was 22. After finishing treatment, in August 2012 the family set her up in a flat, paying a year’s rent-up front and co-signing Natalia’s lease, before they moved to Canada for Jacob’s schooling. Little more was heard from Natalia until 2016 when another couple tried to adopt her, but it fell through when the court upheld her age as 27.

But just a few weeks ago, a case was opened against Kristine and her former husband, charging them with neglecting a dependent by putting them in a situation endangering their life or health, and by abandoning or cruelly confining them.

The case alleges that Natalia informed police in 2014 that her adopted parents had moved to Canada without her. It says she was only 11 when she was left behind, and a document provided by the courts claims Michael alleged that Kristine said to “tell others Natalia looked young but was actually 22”. It does not explain how Natalia survived before contacting police.

Natalia is now living with the same couple who tried to her adopt her in 2016. They already have five children and treat Natalia as a teenager. As of this year, Natalia could either be 16 or 30 years old. Meanwhile. Kristine and Michael protest their innocence. Kristine said, “The media is painting me to be a child abuser, but there is no child here.”

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Speaking to Closer, Kristine says, “My work for the neurodiversity movement is important, and this happening to me is devastating because my real work is to show the potential in suffering children. I have been trying my whole life to show that children with disabilities are precious, with beautiful minds, they are capable and here for a purpose.

“I am praying for Natalia, who I believe is ill, and I am dismayed by the way that our mental health system treats people. The state of Indiana actually discharged Natalia from the mental health system into a halfway house over a year before this, making her homeless and mentally ill.

“Natalia is and always has been an adult in the time that I knew her, but that did not stop me from always seeking her best interests.”