[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
A premiere date has finally been decided upon for the much anticipated ID interview The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks — and she has A LOT to say.
In case you need a refresher, Ukrainian orphan Natalia Grace Barnett‘s story inspired the Warner Bros movie series The Orphan, which follows the story of a grown woman pretending to be a young girl in order to get adopted by a family. In the films, the girl — named Esther — wreaks havoc upon the family and turns their lives into a horror show. The real story, however, is much different, according to the girl who lived it.
Natalia was accused by her adoptive parents Michael and Kristine Barnett of being a grown woman when they adopted her. Her story first started making waves when her parents changed her birthdate to make her much older, under the belief that she was really a grown woman in her 20s out to kill them. At the time, they were arrested for child neglect, but the charges were dropped.
Now, the young woman who is believed to be in her 20s at the present time due to DNA tests and dental records, is finally telling HER side of the story. And it’s a very, very sad one.
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In a preview obtained by TooFab, Natalia claims this whole thing started because shortly after being adopted, Kristine noticed the young girl had pubic hair:
“The first night Kristine gave me a bath and she never mentioned anything to me about pubic hair or anything like that. I didn’t know what that was. I was 6, about to be 7, I didn’t know. I don’t know why they said what they’ve said. I don’t remember Michael ever coming into the bathroom. I just remember Kristine helping me get dressed and getting ready to go to bed. I don’t understand why the Barnetts would say I have public hair or anything like that. I didn’t start noticing any hair until I was like 7, almost 8. But that doesn’t mean that I’m this big monster. I was still a kid. Some kids start early, that’s what happens.”
How embarrassing! And what a wild conclusion to come to after learning your child’s body is developing!
In the interview, the young woman also reacted to her adoptive father’s claims that she had started her period but was “hiding” it. He once said she “wipes it up off the leg, eats it and licks it so nobody would ever find out” — to which Natalia was filled with disgust to hear about:
“That’s downright disgusting. That’s crazy. I’m gonna tell you what really happened. I was 7 years old and all of a sudden Kristine tried to convince me I was having my period. Kristine said, ‘You started your period,’ and she forced me to put the tampon in. And then I literally told her, ‘I can’t. I can’t do it, it hurts.’ But Kristine kept telling me, ‘You need to put it in.’ She made me do it, but I couldn’t. And she was mad, I remember that.”
Continuing on in tears, she claimed the “period blood” was actually just from internal injury due to her adoptive mom trying to force a tampon inside of her:
“So when I was able to take it out, there was blood on it, because of the fact that I’m 7 years old. She said, ‘See, you had your period.’ And I couldn’t say anything about it. And it hurt so bad.”
Awful…
In another part of the docuseries, Natalia touches on what it was like when she was removed from her home and put into an apartment alone after her parents re-aged her:
“A lot of people did not like me at that apartment complex. I wasn’t 22, I was 8 years old, I didn’t know I couldn’t just go into people’s houses, I didn’t know there were boundaries.”
A neighbor appears in one of the episodes, claiming “a lot of people at the apartment reported inappropriate things she did” which included an alleged incident where she had inappropriate contact with “private areas” of a “little boy” — but she outright denies those claims:
“That whole story is misunderstood. We were just rolling in the grass that was in front of the thing and we had a tickle fight. That’s when the dad came out and said, ‘What are you doing?!’ They said I tried to sexually touch him and that was not the case at all … I just started getting yelled at, I didn’t know why, so that’s why I ran. I thought I was just being a kid.”
Another disturbing story from her POV includes accusations of sexual abuse from older men in the complex — which the neighbor in the doc did say would have her over for “hours and hours” at a time. Natalia recalled:
“I was walking around, I was bored, I didn’t know ‘Stranger Danger’ and I was knocking on people’s doors, seeing if anyone would talk to me. There was a guy, he was older, kind of a weird guy. He invited me in and he wasn’t dressed. I asked him what he was watching and it was a video that was a very sexual video. He played it and was like, ‘You can watch it. Just watch it, it’s okay.’”
So gross! No one of any age should be subjected to things like that — especially not someone who was supposedly a child!
She said it made her “very uncomfortable” as you can imagine. Luckily, she ran out of the man’s home before things could progress any further:
“It’s so hard realizing that nobody actually cared. What if the guy raped me or something like that, all because Michael and Kristine pretty much left me?”
The neighbor did say there was a “dirty old man” around the complex that would walk around naked, but they also claimed:
“Natalia never complained about any of these things [and] was always talking about being with guys and sex. I don’t think she really cared that much that he was doing that.”
What an awful thing to say! Just because she didn’t “complain” about it, it must not have affected her? Poor girl…
Earlier this year, Natalia’s adoptive father made more claims about her, saying while she was staying at Indiana State Mental Hospital she was “propositioning men who are mental patients for sexual activity and it’s disturbing them and she can’t be there”. Another accusation she has denied:
“I don’t remember none of that. I was a kid in an adult section of a hospital. I don’t even really remember being around guys like that. I don’t know where all that is coming from. I don’t ever remember talking about having a boyfriend or wanting a boyfriend. If there is a possibility that I did say sexual comments, I probably heard that from somebody because I was really little.”
You can see the trailer for the upcoming docuseries which premieres on January 1 (below):
Wow… such a wild story. The way she was allegedly treated sounds pretty horrible to us, whether she was a child or adult! What do U think?
[Image via Investigation Discovery/Warner Bros/YouTube]
