Topics: Natalia Grace, Crime, True Crime, US News, Parenting, News
Natalia Grace - otherwise known as the child accused by her adoptive parents of being a 'fully grown woman' and con artist - has spoken out.
In her first ever magazine interview, the documentary star provided a chilling update on the case which has hit global headlines for years, and made a gut-wrenching confession about how the former allegations have since left her traumatised.
For those unfamiliar with Natalia's story, in 2010 at the age of six, she was adopted from Ukraine by Indiana couple Michael and Kristine Barnett.
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Just a few years later, however, and her world was turned upside down when her adoptive parents accused her of lying about her age.
The Barnett's alleged at the time that their daughter wasn't even a child when they adopted her, and believed her to be a 'sociopathic' woman with a condition which makes me appear younger.
They accused Natalia - who was born with a rare form of dwarfism - of trying to poison Kristine's coffee and push her into an electric fence.
At the time of the charges, Michael told Dr. Oz’s True Crime viewers it was 'obvious' that his daughter's records were 'falsified'.
"This is an adult masquerading as a child," he claimed.
"We took her to the stress center to have her evaluated that she is having thoughts of harming others, and she is stating out loud that she is attempting to kill Kristine."
After taking their case to court, the youngster's birth year was changed from 2003 to 1989, seeing her Natalia go from an eight-year-old to a 22-year-old overnight.
In the years that followed, the Barnetts moved Natalia into a second story apartment in a nearby town - the stairs of which she struggled to climb due to her condition - before fleeing to Canada, cutting all contact their daughter.
As part of the 2023 documentary The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, a group of health experts rallied together to determine Natalia's 'real' age.
Following a series of tests aimed at determining her chronological age, Natalia was ruled to have been in her very early twenties, meaning she'd have been a child when the Barnetts adopted her after all.
Looking back this week on her first experience of neglect, however, Natalia claimed she had no idea at the time why she'd been abandoned.
"I didn't understand why I was alone," she told People Magazine in a bombshell cover interview this week.
"I just knew I had this instinct in me to push and survive."
And in another heartbreaking confession, she claimed that the Barnetts repeated drilled into her that she was no longer a child.
"I feel like I was brainwashed by the Barnetts," Natalia admitted. "Kristine coached me to lie about my age and say I tried to murder my parents.
"Why would you do that to your child?"
She went on to recall: "All I was told was, ‘You're 22 now. Whenever somebody asks you what your age is, you say you're 22 and you tried to murder your family'. I was taught to lie."
After Natalia's case began gaining notoriety - and she lifted the lid on some of the ways her adoptive parents physically abused her - Indiana Police charged the Barnetts with neglecting a dependent.
While denying that she ever harmed her parents, she told police that Kristine had hit her with a belt on several occasions, pepper-sprayed her in the eyes, and had once given her three times the recommended dose of a prescribed medication Natalia had been taking.
In 2022, however, a jury found Michael not guilty, and charges against Kristine were dropped the following year.
The latter wrote on Facebook following the release of the Discovery+ documentary: "[Natalia] was not abused by anyone in my family. Nobody ever took a belt to Natalia, and the allegations that she was ‘beaten’ are just plain false.
"I sat through numerous hospital visits and therapy visits trying to understand and help Natalia and thinking we might be able to find the root of the issue. In the end I learned she is a sociopath."
