A couple charged with abandoning the young girl they'd adopted have a bizarre excuse: the child was actually a 22-year-old con artist.
In 2010 Kristine and Michael Barnett from Indiana adopted Natalia Grace, a Ukraine-born six-year-old with a rare form of dwarfism. Her birth parents had abruptly left her to fend for herself, and the Barnetts say they were so eager to help they didn't question the situation further.
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But soon after taking her home, the couple began to notice signs that Natalia wasn't who she said she was. She had no trace of a Ukrainian accent and was unable to describe her homeland in any detail.
When she gave the girl a bath, Kristine noticed something else.
"I noticed that she had full pubic hair," she told DailyMailTV. "I was so shocked. I had just been told she was a 6-year-old and it was very apparent she wasn't."
Kristine began to believe her new daughter was probably in her teens after she made several un-childlike comments, hid evidence of her period and seemed to have a full set of adult teeth.
The family doctor Andrew McLaren carried out bone density tests that suggested Natalia was at least 14. Kristine vowed to love her as her own anyway and began dressing her in more teenage-appropriate clothing.
But Natalia began acting strangely, smearing bodily fluids on the walls of their home and hearing voices in her head. Kristine also claims she saw Natalia attack a baby.
Natalia began treatment for several psychiatric disorders at a local stress centre. In 2012 Kristine claimed the girl tried to drag her into an electric fence, and Natalia was placed in a psychiatric unit, during which time a clinical therapist says she confessed to being 18.
Dr McLaren wrote a letter in 2012 in which he said Natalia was an adult con artist who had made a career out of fooling parents and physicians alike by posing as a young child. It's almost the exact plot of the 2009 film Orphan, in which an American couple adopt a nine-year-old Russian girl only to discover she is really a murderous grown woman.
Around the same time, police investigated the circumstances of Natalia's birth as it was suspected her birth parents had lied about her age before she left Ukraine.
Later in 2012 the Barnetts had Natalia's age officially 'corrected' to 22 so she could receive adult psychiatric treatment. A county judge accepted the couple's allegations and changed her date of birth to September 4 1989.
Because she was now considered an adult by the state, the Barnetts rented Natalia her own apartment for her to live in after she was discharged from psychiatric care. When she was evicted from the property for causing problems, they got her a new apartment.
In 2013 the Barnetts moved to Ontario, Canada so their other child could attend an elite college. Kristine says by this time Natalia had stopped all communications with the family.
She told DailyMailTV she suspected Natalia had stopped taking her medication and may have started scamming another family.
"I had found a little pink dress in her closet and a little pink bicycle parked beside her house."
But the Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Department disputes the couple's claims. DailyMailTV reports a different doctor carried out bone density tests on Natalia in 2010 and concluded she was about eight years old. A follow-up two years later concluded she was 11.
A police affidavit says Natalia told officers she'd been abandoned by her adoptive parents in 2014, and she was deemed a "reliable and credible" witness. An officer claims Michael (who has since divorced Kristine and remarried) admitted he knew Natalia was a child. Michael's lawyer has strongly denied the allegation.
Last week the Barnetts were both charged with child abandonment and released on bail. It's unclear why it's taken authorities more than five years to act on the allegations.
In 2016 another couple applied to become Natalia's guardians, which meant having to restore her original birth date to prove she was a minor. The Barnetts filed an objection, claiming Natalia was an adult. The judge upheld that Natalia was a grown woman and the couple dropped their guardianship petition.
No one involved in the criminal case against the Barnetts knows Natalia's current whereabouts.
Newshub.
