Parents Say Adopted Child Was Actually A 22-Year Old Dwarf Who Tried To Kill Them

When we first heard this story, we immediately thought of the Orphan movie — which was a story of a young girl named Esther who caused havoc in her adoptive parents’ lives, in the end finding out that she was really a woman.

Well, according to Kristine and Michael Barnett, they adopted a real-life Esther but her name was Natalia Grace Barnett.

The Barnetts are accused of abandoning their adopted daughter, saying the “girl” was actually an adult who was scamming them and even tried to kill them.

According to court documents filed this month in Tippecanoe County, Kristine and Michael Barnett adopted a Ukrainian-born girl with dwarfism in 2010 and abandoned her three years later in Lafayette, Indiana, when they moved to Canada with their other children.

They’re accused of changing the girl’s age from 8 to 22 before they left.

Charged with neglect of a dependent, both were released on bond last week from the Tippecanoe County Jail last week.

In an interview with the Daily Mail., Kristine Barnett says the adoption was a “scam,” and the child is actually an adult who has made a career out of fooling people into thinking she’s a young girl.

According to the Daily News, in June 2012, the Barnetts had the girl’s age legally changed with the Marion County Superior Court so she could receive appropriate psychiatric treatment.

Kristine  Barnett told the Daily Mail they helped her get a Social Security number and apply for food stamps and other benefits. When the girl was kicked out of a facility overseen by a state health care provider, Barnett says  they helped secure housing for her in Lafayette.

They continued to pay for her housing after they moved to Canada in 2013 for the education of their son Jacob, then a teenage physics prodigy.  The family moved so he could attend the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.

The girl initially attended classes at the Lafayette Adult Resource Academy, but,  WLFI has learned, she stopped going to the school and in 2014 was evicted from her apartment.

By then, Barnett said, the girl had stopped returning her calls. She fears she stopped taking her medication and is posing as a child for another family.

“I would have forced her back into treatment, but I couldn’t do that any longer because she was an adult,” Barnett told the Daily Mail.

Barnett said it doesn’t make sense that they’re being charged with crimes now, several years after her age was upheld in court for the second time.

The adoptive parents appeared in court for the first time Friday to deny felony neglect charges for allegedly dumping Natalia and moving to Canada.

And in a twist, prosecutors hinted that 3ft tall Natalia’s true age was not crucial to their case because the couple could still be convicted of dumping a mentally or physically disabled adult under Indiana law.

The couple – who have since divorced – still insists that they were victims of fraud.

Natalia is now 30-years old, and is currently leaving with another family.

Wow…what a story. What do y’all think? Should the Barnett’s be charged for abandoning Natalia? Leave us a comment below.