Natalia Grace has been the subject of a Discovery documentary
By now you might be familiar with the story of Natalia Grace, and if not here’s the quick version.
In 2010, US couple Kristine and Michael Barnett adopted Ukrainian-born girl Natalia Grace and believed she was a young child with a rare form of dwarfism.
However, the couple then alleged that Natalia was actually an ‘adult sociopath masquerading as a child’ and claimed that she had tried to kill them.
In 2012 they successfully petitioned to have her birth age put back from 2003 to 1989, meaning she would legally be recognised as an adult in her 20s, and left her in an apartment in Indiana as they moved to Canada.
That’s the story of Natalia Grace, though since then there’s been plenty of developments to fill in the details including more light being shed on how old she actually is.
She was adopted in 2010, then her adopted family accused her of being an adult. (YouTube/Inside Edition)
Natalia told her side of things in the documentary The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, where she denied the allegations made by Kristine and Michael Barnett and underwent medical tests to determine her actual age.
By this time she had been adopted by another family and in 2023 underwent a DNA test to get some clarity on how old she really was.
She went through DNA testing with the company TruDiagnostic, which told her: “Based on all the studies and everything being analysed, you’re more close to 22, which is pretty close to what you think… you’re almost 20. That’s two years.”
When her adopted parents abandoned her in 2012 they claimed she was a 22-year-old posing as a child, but according to the DNA test she would have been around nine years old when they left her in an Indiana apartment and went to Canada.
The documentary team even managed to track down Natalia’s biological mother, whose comments appeared to indicate that she thought Natalia had been born in 2003.
Her adoptive family left her in an Indiana apartment and then moved to Canada. (YouTube/Inside Edition)
Legal expert Beth Karas said that re-aging is ‘not unusual’ when it comes to adopted children but that giving Natalia a new age in her 20s didn’t really ‘make sense’ to her.
She said: “The judge had a petition prepared by an attorney that would lay out the arguments for why this person is not the age they believe she is – she is actually an adult.
“Nobody knows quite what age, but she has not grown in four years, so the judge came up with his own little formula: ‘Well, you stop growing at 18 – if she hasn’t grown in four years then she’s at least 18 when she entered their lives. And I’m gonna add four years’.
“He said, ‘Okay, I find you 22′.”
A DNA test done told her that she actually had been a child when she was adopted. (YouTube/Inside Edition)
After getting the DNA test Natalia said: “This is so big because literally, this has been 13 years, 13 years of just two people lying their butts off.”
Charges of neglect were brought against the Barnetts, but in 2022 a jury trial acquitted Michael Barnett while the Journal and Courier reports that in 2023 a judge dismissed the charge of neglect against Kristine as there was ‘insufficient evidence at trial to prove the charges in this case beyond a reasonable doubt’.
as some big monster, when they were the ones.”
If what the doc says is true, then it would mean Natalia was four when she went over to the USA from Ukraine.
Investigation Discovery
And therefore, she would have been just seven when the Barnetts adopted her.
Then – and you can see where this is going – she would only have been eight when the petition to change her age to 22 was filed.
The American couple reckoned she was an adult the whole time, so it would have meant she’d have been just nine when they placed her into an apartment alone.
“I always knew I wasn’t an adult,” Natalia says.
She then cryptically adds something else, which seems like the potential opening of a whole other can of worms: “They are hiding something big, I wanna know the answers to these questions and I want people to pay for what they’ve done.”
The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks premieres on Investigation Discovery on 1 January 2024.
This ‘proof’ of her ‘real age’ throws ‘every single lie that the Barnetts have said right into the trash,’ according to Grace.
She emotionally says: “This is so big. This has literally been 13 years of just two people lying their butts off, they painted me as some big monster, when they were the ones.”
If what Dr Chen says is true, it would in fact mean Grace was about seven when the American couple adopted her.
The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks premieres on Investigation Discovery on 1 January 2024 in the US and will hit Discovery Plus some time in 2024 in the UK
