Parents accused of abandoning adopted daughter to move overseas
A couple have been charged after allegedly abandoning their 11-year-old daughter with dwarfism and moving overseas six years ago.
Kristine Elizabeth Barnett, 45, and Michael Barnett, 43, of the US state of Indiana, have been charged with neglect.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed in the case, the couple adopted the girl in 2010 and a doctor who examined her that year determined she was about eight-years-old.
When a detective spoke to Mr Barnett earlier this month, he said he and his wife had the girl’s age legally changed to 22 in June of 2012 and that his wife told her to tell anyone who asked that she “looks young but was actually 22”.
Mr Barnett told the detective that he and his wife rented an apartment in Lafayette, Indiana, in July 2013 and, despite knowing that the child knew no one in that city, left her there and moved to Canada, investigators wrote in the affidavit.
He said that other than paying the apartment’s rent, they provided the girl with no financial support.
The girl told a detective with the Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Department in September 2014 that she had come to the US “through an adoption” in 2008 from her native Ukraine and that the Barnetts adopted her two years later.
She said she lived with the Barnetts in Hamilton County, just north of Indianapolis, for about two years, after which they rented the apartment for her in Lafayette, about 96 kilometres northwest of Indianapolis.
“She was left alone in the apartment in Lafayette while the rest of the Barnett family moved to Canada,” investigators wrote in the affidavit, adding that the girl hasn’t seen the Barnetts since.
The affidavit leaves a lot unclear, including how long the girl lived alone in the apartment before her plight was discovered and why an investigation that apparently began in September of 2014 took years to result in charges against the Barnetts.
It also doesn’t say where in Canada the Barnetts lived or whether they have since returned to the US, though the Barnetts have different addresses listed in Indianapolis.
Prosecutors did not respond to several questions emailed to them Friday about the case, saying only in a reply that they had asked a county judge to issue an order for the Barnetts to appear at an initial hearing on the charges.
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