"I am certainly not going to claim I was a perfect mom," says the Ukrainian orphan's adoptive mother while responding to allegations of abuse, abandonment and claims she tried to "pimp out" Natalia to an older man.
The woman who adopted and re-aged Ukrainian orphan Natalia Grace is speaking out against claims made against her in a recent docuseries.
ID's The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, which concluded in dramatic fashion on Wednesday night, included a number of allegations about Kristine Barnett -- who, along with husband Michael Barnett, adopted Natalia in 2010. At the time, they were told she was a 6-year-old girl, but soon after had her birth certificate changed to make her a 23-year-old adult, before placing her in her own apartment. The parents were later arrested for neglect, but cleared of the charges.
On the docuseries, Natalia accused her adoptive mother of abuse, while denying Kristine's claims the orphan was out to kill her and her children. A man who says Kristine reached out to him for advice on raising a little person also claimed the girl's adoptive mother tried to set him up on a date with Natalia ... before saying she also told him the girl "started f--king her husband."
Taking to Facebook on Thursday Barnett responded to the allegations.
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View Story"Natalia was a very much loved and cared for member of my family. She was not abused by anyone in my family," she began, saying any allegations Natalia was "beaten" were "just plain false."
Kristine said the had "good days and bad days as a mom" and was "certainly not going to claim I was a perfect mom," adding that while she's sure she had "plenty of fails" as a parent, she was "not abusive to my children."
She went on to claim Natalia would call CPS, believing allegations about mistreatment were instead a way for her to "lead people away from investigating her personal behaviors which were extreme and usually of some sort of sexual or hurtful to towards others nature." Kristine also wrote that she was "constantly checked for abuse" at various hospitals, but said abuse "was not found to exist."
Barnett reiterated that the neglect charges against her were dismissed, calling it a case "that should not have been brought" in the first place. She also pointed out how a jury found Michael innocent, before saying "the fact that these false allegations are occurring after a trial with evidence which was dismissed is disturbing" and likening it to "being assumed guilty after being proven innocent."
The jury in Michael's trial, however, was not allowed to know anything about the discrepancy over Natalia's age and were told she was an adult. The foreperson even appeared on an earlier docuseries about Natalia last year and said that if she was truly a child, it seemed "like a huge miscarriage of justice." She added, "We felt that Michael Barnett had really gotten away with abandoning and neglecting his child. And none of us felt good about that."
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View StoryOf the abandonment claims, Kristine denies that ever happened.
She said that Natalia was re-aged "at the recommendation of law enforcement" based on "behaviors, statements and much more evidence," which then allowed her to "make her own adult decisions of where to live and what to do with her life" Kristine said she felt that Antwon and Cynthia Mans -- who later took in Natalia before legally adopting her last year -- might have been exploiting Natalia for rent money, and claimed she also reported them to adult protective services.
"I understand compassion people have for Natalia because I had that same compassion myself," Barnett continued, saying she believes "Natalia takes advantage of that sympathy to manipulate people." That conclusion, she wrote, came after "numerous hospital visits and therapy visits trying to understand and help Natalia and thinking we might be able to find the root of the issue."
"In the end I learned she is a sociopath," claimed Kristine. "I still have not wrapped my head around that diagnosis to this day honestly and I still revert to feeling sympathy for her and hope that she will do well in life. It's very hard for me to understand to this day what happened in our lives with Natalia or to process it."
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View StoryAfter defending Michael -- saying he didn't abuse Natalia either and "tried very hard to make a good home for her" -- she then touched on one specific instance in which she believes their adoptive daughter tried to murder her. In the earlier 2023 docuseries, Michael detailed an alleged instance in which Natalia was "trying to pull Kristine" toward an electric fence they had all been warned about previously. He claimed the girl also told police who responded to the incident that she was "trying to kill" Kristine.
Calling the incident "a real thing and a well documented murder attempt," Kristine added, "You cannot plan for someone to try to kill you." She also said Natalia could overpower her at the time because she had lupus and was going through chemotherapy.
Kristine also addressed criticism over Natalia being set up in an apartment located on the second floor, as the orphan said she had trouble navigating the stairs as a little person. According to Kristine, Natalia chose the apartment herself and she had never shown signs of struggle with stairs while living with them, her previous guardians or the state hospital where she was treated.
She claimed Natalia was evicted from another building "for solicitation of a man in the laundry room" and said she was "not surprised" to hear and fully believes claims she also made "sexual advances towards a child at that time."
"I also believe that could explain why Natalia wanted to leave that town before being investigated for that crime. If there's one thing Natalia is good at it's getting enormous enough amounts of sympathy to cover up her own outrageous behaviors," she added.
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View StoryIn her post, Kristine went on to call Natalia's "entire demeanor to be quite contradictory to the demeaner I experienced from her and it was eerie watching her as if she was very well coached in how she was dressed and behaved and presented herself." She said she believes the Natalia seen in the docuseries is "a mask," adding, "Natalia will go to great lengths to hurt people but also to gain tremendous amounts of sympathy at the same time."
Responding to Freddie Gill's allegations that she tried to set him up with Natalia on a date, Barnett called them "insane." Criticizing the show for using "sensational" tactics and chopping up text messages presumably out of context, she said she was simply setting up a "playdate" for her child and was not "pimping" her out. "Sensational sure sells though and this series will do nothing but exploit sensational drama," she wrote, before asking, "Did Jerry Springer haunt this series? Perhaps."
Kristine ended her post by showing support to her son Jacob -- who was extremely distraught throughout the docuseries while reflecting on how he allegedly helped abuse Natalia -- and cleared him of any wrongdoing. "Several times if she was dangerous he may have had to stand up for himself to not be hurt but he was never the 'hurter' of Natalia," she claimed.
Using Michael's own words, she concluded by writing, "Michael Barnett and Natalia Barnett may have the same monster but that monster is not me. That monster, whether it's mental illness sociopathy or whatever it actually is may be different for each of them. But it's within their own psyche."
All six episodes of The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks are streaming now on Max. See more coverage below!