A mother accused of felony neglect for abandoning her nine-year-old adopted daughter has claimed that she was not a little girl at all but actually a 22-year-old sociopath who attempted to kill her on one than more occasion.
The 45-year-old Kristine Barnett is a mother-of-three and author of a renowned parenting book.
Barnett is accused of dumping Ukranian-born Natalia Grace at an apartment in Indiana back in 2013 when she was an alleged nine years old before fleeing to Canada with her ex-husband, Michael Barnett, 43, and their other children.
Allegedly, the couple broke off contact with their adopted daughter, paying rent for the apartment they left her in, but not supporting her financially in any other way. Police report that Natalia was left to fend for herself for three years despite having a rare form of dwarfism which meant she was just three-feet-tall and had issues walking.
But Kristine is adamant that the real victims of this scenario are herself and her family due to Natalia being 22 at the time. The mother claims her family were terrorized by the girl on multiple occasions.
The 45-year-old in an interview with Daily Mail TV.
S”he 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. She was standing over people in the middle of the night. You couldn’t go to sleep. We had to hide all the sharp objects. 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’. The media is painting me to be a child abuser but there is no child here.”
The mother continued to reveal how Natalia was a woman, saying:
“She had periods. She had adult teeth. She never grew a single inch, which would happen even with a child with dwarfism.”
Both Kristine and Michael adopted Natalia in 2010 from Ukraine but Kristine shares how she began to get suspicious that everything was not as it seemed as once, she was giving her a bath when she noticed “she had full pubic hair.”
After having a doctor perform a bone density tests, they allegedly proved the young girl was at least 14 and Kristine says how she began purchasing her more “age-appropriate” clothes. But at this point, the girl’s mental health began to deteriorate.
The mother revealed how Natalia smeared bodily fluids on the walls, made death threats and even attempted to drag her onto an electric fence during a birthday outing in 2012. She claims they realized the adoption was a scam and made the choice to leave.
But earlier in the month, 43-year-old Michael reportedly told a detective earlier this month how he and his wife he had Natalia’s age legally changed to 22 in June of 2012, and his wife told her to tell anyone who asked that she “looks young but was actually 22.”
Natalia was interviewed by the police in 2014 and had shared with them she had “had not seen the Barnett’s since they moved to Canada.”
Investigators wrote in the affidavit the following:
“She was left alone in the apartment in Lafayette while the rest of the Barnett family moved to Canada.”
Kristine disputes the charges against her, saying how she is “sick and devastated” and will continue to maintain they how are false charges.
Both Kristine and Michael have been charged with two counts of neglect of a dependent.