Orphan Natalia Grace's Adoptive Mother Allegedly Coached Her About Age, Tried to Set Her Up with Adult

Neither Natalia nor her adoptive mother Kristine Barnett spoke for ID's "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace," but her adoptive father Michael and oldest brother Jacob painted a picture of familial abuse dominated and controlled by Kristine.

A quick refresher: Michael and Kristina Barnett claimed Natalia -- who was born with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia -- came to them through an adoption agency in 2010 and were told she was six at the time. But they began to doubt her age and, in June 2012, Marion County Superior Court agreed to legally change the girl's birth record to indicate she was born in 1989 and not 2003.

Shortly after, the Barnetts set her up with an apartment in Lafayette, Indiana, while they moved with their three sons to Canada. According to her new birthdate, she would have been in her 20s at the time ... but not even 10 years old based on her Ukrainian birth record.

She eventually befriended nearby residents Antwon and Cynthia Mans, who took her in to their own home. The Barnetts, meanwhile, were charged and arrested for neglect in 2019, but claimed Barnett was not actually a child. Michael was cleared of all four neglect charges he was facing on October 27, 2022, while the charges against Kristine were dismissed in March 2023.

In the final two hours of ID's docuseries, Michael broke down several times, lamenting that he wasn't stronger and able to stand up to his ex-wife. He also professed hope before her case was dropped that she would serve prison time.

After spending hours painting Natalia in an uncertain and even potentially dangerous light, the concluding chapters shifted the narrative to explore the idea that Natalia was just another victim of Kristine's alleged abuse.

In one disturbing scene, that clearly made him uncomfortable to talk about, Jacob claimed that Kristine ordered him to go into his sister's room and urinate on her bed.

"One of Natalia's problematic behaviors is she would frequently soil, urinate in places she shouldn't," he said. "it was happening frequently, what my mother was trying to do to address the situation wasn't working."

"The vivid part is basically the action," Jacob said. "I remember feeling anger while I was doing it, like, this will show her." At this point, a clearly uncomfortable Jacob said that the guilt from him doing this keeps him up at night.

"Like, I kinda feel like a Nazi following orders, in a way. So there's definitely guilt," he said. He also said that he doesn't think Natalia "was treated fairly."

"In the unlikely scenario that Natalia listens to this or doesn't turn it off, I hope she understand I'm apologetic," he said, unable to look directly into the camera. "I've had a lot of time to really think about stuff and grow up."

Michael spoke about this as well, getting riled up about his ex-wife, claiming that they were all abused by Kristine, including Natalia and the two sons who still live with her. "That woman is a controlling, lying, manipulating woman, we were all abused!"

According to Michael, his ex-wife even coached Natalia on how to introduce herself to people at her older age after her birth year was legally changed from 2003 to 1989. Mimicking her voice, he said, "Hi, my name's Natalia. I might look young, but I'm actually 23 years old and I'm dangerous. I've tried to kill people before."

When asked how he could let that happen, Michael sidestepped the question a bit, saying that he doesn't think he "ever witnessed her say that to a stranger publicly aloud." He further explained, "It was something Kristine taught Natalia for when we weren't around and Kristine couldn't warn the people herself that she's dangerous."

He did say that at the time, due to the abuse and manipulation he'd allegedly suffered under Kristine's rule over the household, he was unable to stand up to her.

The allegation, though, that Kristine may have been coaching Natalia to say certain things adds a different context to what she told neighbors, and even said in interviews where she contradicted herself constantly (at one point saying she wasn't "whupped" by the family only to immediately counter that and say Kristine, then her brothers, and then Michael all "whupped" her).

Natalia herself seemed to confirm the allegation that she was told to say certain things when she was asked about the story she'd told that she tried to poison her parents. In a 2022 deposition, she said, "No, that's what [Kristine] told me to tell them."

The neighbor she told the story to was skeptical as well, noting, "I felt like either she was coached to say that and those things didn't happen and somebody was saying this is what happened and kind of made her believe that, or she was so far disconnected emotionally from what was happening."

When Michael was asked in 2019 what would have happened had he not gone along with he claimed was Kristine's plan to re-age Natalia to 22 years old, one year beyond the legal requirement for guardianship in Indiana. "Oh my god, I would have lost my kids then," he said. "Never see my kids again, kicked out of the house."

According to Michael, Kristine's allegedly manipulative and controlling tactics carried over into her relationship with him. He said she would withhold sex in order to control him, and then offered it up after their separation to get full custody of their boys.

He further alleged that she has been poisoning the younger two boys who still live with her against him, saying, "She told my kids over and over and over and over, your father's going to kill you, I'm going to protect you." He questioned how many times a young child would have to hear such a thing to believe it, lamenting that he hasn't seen or heard from them in eight years.

One of the more disturbing allegations that came out was how Kristine allegedly appeared to use sex in a lot of her relationships. Described as "not tech savvy," she didn't seem to understand that the phone she was using was backing up all photos to Michael's Dropbox.

At first, he said he enjoyed the connection because it allowed him to see pictures of his two youngest sons. But then he claims he started seeing the same kinds of flirtatious and graphically sexual images she used to send to him, clearly being sent to other people.

During discovery for his trial, police subpoenaed Kristine's Facebook account, through which he apparently discovered a lot of other connections she'd made that allegedly went from innocent at first to quickly sexual (at least on her end). One of those was with Freddie Gill, a country music artist and little person.

Interviewed for the docuseries, Freddie said that she'd initially reached out to him because he was a little person and might be able to offer some insight into Natalia's condition. But, he said their conversation quickly started to become sexual.

He later said that he found himself pulled into the case when he received a call from the sex trafficking division of the Indiana state police. "He wanted to know if I'd ever dated Natalia," Freddie said. "And I kind of was-- Well, I was, like, flabbergasted. Basically, someone asking me had I ever had sexual relations with Natalia."

Freddie said the officer assured him that he didn't have to feel bad if anything happened. "Even if you kissed her, I need to know," he said he was told, with assurances that he wouldn't get into trouble.

As it stood, though, Freddie insisted that he'd never been intimate with another little person. While he wasn't sure how they even got his number, he had an idea.

"Maybe he saw on the message where Kristine tried to set me up with [Natalia]," Freddie said. "But I didn't take the bait. No reply from me. I just was like, 'Eugh. It gave me shivers to think that anybody would even remotely do that. I don't go there and I think people who do go there should have their balls chopped off. It's just really disgusting."

At this point, the message Kristine allegedly sent him was displayed on the screen: "I want to fix you up on a night out with Natalia."

Michael was horrified by this allegation, which was revealed toward the end of the final episode. At that point, the docuseries producers told him there was something else that Freddie had said, "a very serious allegation" against Michael.

At this point, he got both flippant and very angry, saying he doesn't care what his wife might have said about him to anyone. His lawyer, though, appreciated this opportunity to get ahead of whatever it was, encouraging him to look at it.

Ultimately and reluctantly, Michael pressed play on the video of Freddie. He said, "Kristine told me in a series of messages Natalia ruined her life in so many ways. Kristine basically said that Natalia started--"

At this point, the footage cut and we returned to an irate Michael standing up and saying, "No. Guys, mics off. I don't wanna talk about this part at all."

This was all after he'd been found not guilty in his own trial, but before Kristine's trial was dismissed. Freddie insisted he was going "to do the right thing" and tell the truth, but viewers never got to see whatever that final allegation was.

With Michael's story coming to a close, ID is prepping the next chapter of "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace" dubbed "Natalia Speaks." In a teaser for this new chapter, the network says that with legal proceedings over and a gag order lifted, Natalia is finally free to tell her side of the story.

"The things that Michael has said that I've done is a lie," Natalia says in the first teaser. "I want to tell people what really happened because I didn't get that chance." ID's "Natalia Speaks" is coming later this summer.