In May 2010 Kristine and her ex-husband Michael Barnett decided to expand their family: they adopted a six-year- old Ukrainian girl named Natalia Grace , who suffered from a bone growth disorder called spondyloepimetaphyseal dysplasia.

However, this stage of his life quickly became a nightmare with chilling similarities to the horror movie The Orphan . The little girl they had adopted was actually a 19-year-old girl with dwarfism .

Although the first year in her new home was relatively quiet, over time the alleged girl began to manifest symptoms of mental instability. According to the adoptive mother, Natalia tried to kill her adoptive parents on more than one occasion: " She wanted to kill us ." As Kristine has told the British newspaper Dailymail , she tried to push her against an electric fence, poison her by bleaching her coffee and even threatened to stab her and her husband .

An image of Natalia with her father on a family trip.

The Barnett, alarmed by their behavior, took the girl to a mental health center. During the review, the specialists assured the couple that the age of their adopted daughter was "clearly inaccurate . " Those responsible for the center explained to the marriage that Natalia's teeth, as well as her sexual development, did not correspond to a person her age. One of the specialists even assured them that the tests showed that he was over 18 years old.

Despite the diagnosis, Natalia remained with the family until 2013, when the Barnett decided to leave her. "He made drawings showing that he wanted to kill family members. He wanted to roll us up in a blanket and bury us in a yard, " explains the mother. He adds that many nights they could not sleep until she did not: "We could not go to sleep and hide all sharp objects ."

They arrest the adoptive parents

After a while, in which Natalia repeatedly tried to end the lives of her adoptive parents and siblings, the family moved to Canada . However, they did not leave her helpless: they rented an apartment in Lafayette County, in the US, helped her get a social security number and gave her coupons to buy food. Several years later, after not knowing anything about her for months, the couple was arrested by the authorities of Indiana, USA, for abandoning a child.

The arrest came after Natalia declared to the police in 2014 that her parents had abandoned her when she was 11 years old . To reinforce her testimony, the young woman relied on an alleged bone test performed by an expert. The results indicated that she was eight years old when she was adopted and 11 when she was abandoned. However, the evidence does not match those obtained by the Barnett family.

Currently, the family and their adopted daughter face each other in court to reveal the truth. While Natalia Grace says she was born in 2003 , the Barnett family says the "girl" could have been born in 1989 and could be up to 30 years old .

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