Mum charged with abandoning daughter with dwarfism makes startling claims
A mother who is accused of abandoning her adopted daughter has spoken out to claim she and her ex-partner are the victims.
Kristine Barnett and her now ex-husband Michael Barnett adopted Natalia Grace, a Ukranian girl who has dwarfism, in 2010 when hospital records said the girl was eight years old.
But in 2012, the parents legally changed her age to 22 before leaving her alone in an Indiana apartment and moved to Canada.
And while the couple have been charged for neglecting Natalia, they insist they only acted after suffering years of terror at the hands of their daughter.
‘She would make statements and draw pictures saying she wanted to kill family members, roll them up in a blanket and put them in the backyard,’ Ms Barnett told DailyMailTV.
The case has drawn attention from across the globe, with interest fuelled by its eerie similarities to the horror film Orphan.
Ms Barnett said Natalia would stand over people when they slept and she was forced to hide all sharp objects in their home due to fears of what she was capable of.
“I saw her putting chemicals, bleach, Windex something like that, in my coffee and I asked her: ‘what are you doing?’ She said: ‘I am trying to poison you’,” she recalled.
Ms Barnett said she is being portrayed as a child abuser but insists it couldn’t be further from the truth.
The mother said Natalia had periods and had adult teeth while she never grew over three years, all proving that she wasn’t a child.
She also said doctors diagnosed her with a severe psychological illness only adults were capable of having.
Ms Barnett said it led her to jumping from moving cars and smearing blood over mirrors.
But the Tippercanoe County Sheriff’s Department allege the girl was 8-years-old when she was adopted and issued arrest warrants for the couple this month.
They both surrendered to authorities and have been released on bail.
In 2012, the Barnetts appeared on 60 Minutes for a story about their then 13-year-old son Jake who has Asperger’s syndrome.
The segment looked at how Jake, with the help of his parents, was studying physics at Purdue University Indianapolis despite once being told he may never be able to read.
It appeared to show the then-couple’s adopted daughter sitting at the dinner table with them.
Ms Barnett also published a book around the same time the segment aired titled: “The Spark: A mother’s story of Nurturing, Genius, and Autism”.
Her book looks at how Jake developed physics theories before he was 10 and how his parents raised him.
With AP
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