Parents Adopt Ukrainian 6YO, Suspected To Be 22YO ‘Sociopath’ Trying To Kill Them

Sit tight kids, cause this story sibeh exciting. A bit of a spoiler, so don’t hover over the link if you don’t want to know what it is.

What’s in this article is basically the plot of this horror movie… but in real life.

Oh yeah… Prepare to be spooked.

Kristine and Michael Barnett, Foster Parents

The Barnetts are a Christian couple who were experienced foster parents and ran a children’s daycare from their Westfield, Indiana (that’s in United States) home.

Kristine had severe complications in her pregnancies and was unable to have more children, but felt privileged enough that she wanted to adopt more children to help them.

Here’s when this random emergency adoption situation happened.

Natalia, a kid who was, as they were told, in the US for two years, had a Ukranian birth certificate reading 4 September 2003 and needed a home immediately because her previous adoptive parents suddenly gave her up. No reasons were given as to why they did that.

The Barnetts were given only 24 hours to complete the emergency adoption, so they rushed to sign the papers in Florida.

‘Out of compassion for their situation I didn’t want to press them for information on what had gone wrong,‘ Kristine said.

When they picked Natalia up in May 2010, Natalia was supposed to be 6 years old.

‘Natalia was extremely nervous. You could see she was going to need a lot of support and care. We did notice immediately in the parking lot that she couldn’t walk. There was nothing in the paperwork stating that.’

After that, they did typical loving parent-kid stuff, like Disney world, ice cream, treats, pillow fights with her three brothers.

Everything looked happy and Natalia’s adoption was completed in November 2010.

Sidetrack: in case you’re questioning the parenting abilities of the Barnetts, one of the three brothers was an adopted autistic kid named Jacob Barnett who went on to become a genius. By genius, I mean attending uni at age 10 and then publishing an academic physics paper at 13. Before the adoption, they were told Jacob would “never be able to talk, read, or even tie his shoes”.

So yeah, the Barnetts were simultaneously living two god damn movies at the same time. But because you only paid the ticket for one, we’ll continue with the horror one.

Natalia’s First Beach

The boys went to the water, but Natalia wanted to be carried into the ocean. Since they were tired, the Barnetts asked Natalia to wait.

Instead, she just ran into the ocean alone despite claiming to not be able to walk.

Later on, Kristine gave the girl a bath and noticed that she had full pubic hair. Which, I remind you, only grows around puberty.

Clues To Being Older

Remember the daycare? One fine day Natalia just said to Kristine, “These children are exhausting, I don’t know how you do it.”

Which sounds like a cute thing a kid pretending to be an adult might say, but there are other strange things going on here.

Natalia disliked dolls and toys, and instead wanted the company of teenage girls and also use difficult vocabulary beyond someone who was supposed to be 6 years old.

And then there’s also the bloody clothing in the trash, which suggests she was having her period and trying to hide the evidence.

So Kristine looked to her family physician, who ordered bone density tests. This suggested she was at least 14 years old.

But it all didn’t really matter.

‘It’s very hard to decipher how old she is because she has such a unique look. But at that time I started to believe she was probably a teenager. 

‘But I didn’t have any regrets. This was what I wanted to do. I felt overwhelming love for her.’

They just started treating her more like a teenager instead.

Mental Breakdown

As more questions about Natalia’s age popped up, she began to behave even more and more strangely.

She attacked a baby boy when Kristine was out of the room and happened to be watching the baby monitor.

By 2011, she was smearing bodily fluid on walls to make death threats and hearing voices.

So she was sent for therapy, spending days to weeks at a time for the next year at the St Vincent Indianapolis Stress Center to treat various psychiatric disorders.

During therapy, Natalia scoffed at the ‘childish’ bonding exercises and even confessed to being far older than she appeared.

Once, for a birthday outing in 2012, Natalia tried to drag Kristine into an electric fence. Natalia was placed long term at a state-run psychiatric unit because she posed a risk to others.

‘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.’

‘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.”

‘She was jumping out of moving cars. She was smearing blood on mirrors. She was doing things you could never imagine a little child doing.’

Overwhelming Evidence To Older Age

In January 2012, one clinical therapist said Natalia claimed to them she was 18.

In June 2012, at Larue Carter Hospital In Indianapolis, staff said Natalia described trying to kill family members without remorse and even said it was fun.

March 2012, Barnett’s primary care physician, Andrew Mclaren MD, sent a letter saying Natalia’s 2003 birth date was clearly inaccurate and she had made a career out of pretending to be a young child. Natalia had fooled him, her parents and other physicians.

In 2012, the police were also investigating on an immigration fraud suspecting false age reporting, though this was later not pursued further.

With all these, the Barnetts successfully applied to have her age corrected, to which the date of birth was changed appropriately to 22, with the date of birth 4 Sep 1989.

Exorcism!

At this point, by any horror movie standards its time for the exorcists or come…except it’s real-life so the real exorcism is called being declared an adult.

So the Barnetts rented an apartment for Natalia when she was discharged from secure psychiatric care, helped her get a social security number, apply for benefits, food stamps and an ID.

She later got kicked out for causing problems at the property, so they rented another.

They communicated daily with Natalia, with the plan being to eventually send her to college and study cosmetology.

In 2013 Natalia just disappeared. Presumably because who the hell wants to grow up lol.

‘She discontinued communication with me. What I did get was a letter in the mail stating that she had changed Michael from the beneficiary of her social security income to someone else.’

Credit Roll

So now, you’re probably thinking, wah, this story machiam exciting, so what happened next?

And like any B- grade movie, I have to drop a sequel worthy ending. Sequel worthy, meaning a shit ending that isn’t an ending.

When I said the Barnetts were living two movies, I was lying. They were living in three.

The third one’s a courtroom drama cause they were sued for child abuse.

Here’s part of the trailer: In 2016, another couple applied to adopt Natalia. The Barnetts tried to object since this would overturn the 2012 results.

Read the rest here.

I guess some people’s lives are just more drama-filled huh…