Disturbing Details About The Natalia Grace Case

The story of Natalia Grace began with a relatively simple international adoption, but turned into a saga that involved multiple families, the court system, some agencies, and the production crews for a long-running documentary series as well as a scripted version. All of it was after the same goal: To ensure that a young child adopted out of Ukraine and into the United States was properly cared for, and that anybody who committed some kind of criminal act, be it fraud, abuse, or worse, was held accountable by the law. As events unfolded, a curious side story emerged that called into question whether Grace really was who she and her supporters claimed to be.

This is the intricate and delicate situation surrounding Grace, who arrived in the U.S. more than a decade and a half ago. Diagnosed with a rare form of dwarfism, she was accused by some of her many adoptive families of secretly being an adult and having murderous impulses. The entire tale of Grace is an epic story that was amplified by the true crime craze and nurtured by several iterations of the reality series "The Curious Case of Emily Grace" and the made-for-TV soap "Good American Family," all of which exposed millions to the difficulties and complications of adoption. To this point and likely into the future, the most interesting, sad, and stunning aspects of what happened to Natalia Grace and how her life was affected have been heavily documented and scrutinized.

Despite all of the public debate, arguments, and legal cases surrounding the true age and intent of Natalia Grace, a large volume of legal documents prove that she was born in Ukraine within a specific time period, and thus is the age she always purported to be. According to a birth certificate, a detailed medical history, documents relating to Grace's adoption history, and a statement from the biological mother giving up her legal rights as the child's mother, Grace was born in Ukraine on September 4, 2003.

Grace's biological mother is Anna Gava, who was born in Latvia in 1979 but later moved to Ukraine. Gava was unable to provide the high level of specialized care needed to properly take care of Grace, who was diagnosed with an exceedingly rare health condition around the time of her birth. She has spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, which affects the spine and the bones, limiting growth and leading to permanent shortness. Those with the condition reach a height similar to that of a child, along with a youthful appearance, as well as other skeletal issues. Around the time that her child turned 5 years old in 2008, Gava allowed Grace to be adopted into another family.

Somewhat overlooked in the story of Natalia Grace are her first adoptive parents in the United States. As they declined to participate in the highly-viewed, multiple-season documentary series "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace," and aren't depicted on-screen or mentioned by name in the fictionalized narrative Hulu show "Good American Family," relatively little is known about Dyan and Gary Ciccone, who brought Grace into their family around 2009, when the child was about 6 years old.

Less than two years after the placement, the Ciccones sought to un-adopt Grace and relinquish their parental rights with the goal of sending her to another family. Chief among the Ciccones' concerns was that the adoption agency they'd worked with hadn't told them about Grace's significant medical issues and how expensive they would be. The couple footed the bill for one necessary surgery and then decided they couldn't afford the child, and seemingly arranged a private, unregulated adoption with Kristine and Michael Barnett of Florida. While the Barnetts claimed they used Good Shepherd Adoptions to aid in their adoption of Grace (shown in "Good American Family"), the agency denied having any involvement, as it's not licensed to operate in the Ciccones' home state of New Hampshire or the Barnetts home state of Florida.

After adopting Natalia Grace through a Florida-based agency in 2010, Kristine and Michael Barnett claim to have witnessed alarming behavior in the child. "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," Kristine Barnett (pictured) told the Daily Mail. 

Some of the frightening incidents that allegedly took place were threats or violent language, at least at first. "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," Barnett said. At some point, Grace's outbursts turned physical and outward. Kristine Barnett ran a daycare center out of her Indiana home, and she says that she once witnessed Grace violently assault a toddler via a video baby monitor. Barnett said she secured anything sharp in the home after a late night incident. "She was standing over people in the middle of the night. You couldn't go to sleep," she alleged. "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.'"

During a birthday party excursion in 2012, according to Barnett, Grace tried to shove her mother into an electric fence. Shortly thereafter, the Barnetts committed Grace to a state psychiatric center that specialized in treating violent behavior.

In addition to violent behavior, other things seemed amiss about Natalia Grace. Just after the adoption, Kristine Barnett bathed Grace and saw physical features that suggested she was older than 6. "I noticed that she had full pubic hair. I was so shocked," Barnett told DailyMailTV. Barnett claimed that Grace acted like a young adult, demonstrating a lack of interest in toys and enjoying hanging around with teenagers. Barnett also claimed that Grace spoke fluent English and peppered her speech with large words, didn't understand Ukrainian, and couldn't recall any details of her country of birth.

Those details and others — Barnett found bloodied garments in a garbage can, suggesting that Grace was menstruating in secret — resulted in the couple's belief that Grace wasn't a child. "She had adult teeth. She never grew a single inch, which would happen even with a child with dwarfism," Barnett said. "The doctors all confirmed she was suffering a severe psychological illness only diagnosed in adults." 

A clinical therapist who treated Grace claimed that the patient admitted she was 18 in a 2012 session, bone density test results pinned her age at 14, and the Barnett's family physician opined that their daughter was a fully grown imposter, all of which lead to Barnetts asking the Marion County Superior Court to amend the birth records. Ostensibly to get her adult-level psychiatric care, the revised documents placed Grace's birth year as 1989, instead of 2003.

After Kristine and Michael Barnett successfully petitioned a judge to change Natalia Grace's legal birth year from 2003 to 1989, and after she was discharged from a mental health care treatment facility, the couple transitioned their adopted daughter, who they then believed to be an adult, into living independently. 

The Barnetts rented an apartment in Westfield, Indiana, near their home, and moved in Grace in 2013. They set her up with state-funded health care, and helped her apply for a Social Security number, identification, government benefits, and food stamps, while also buying furniture and a stockpile of canned goods. While at this point Grace was an adult as far as the law was concerned, and thus responsible for herself, Barnett offered to pay for her daughter's living expenses — including rent — for no more than one year.

Within a few months, Grace was evicted from the apartment on account of bad behavior. The Barnetts set up Grace in a second apartment, this time in Lafayette, Indiana. While she was legally in her 20s, the individual was by most accounts biologically around 8 years old, living completely alone, and with her parents' help set to expire. Beyond that, they couldn't even offer proximity. Following Grace's move to Lafayette, the Barnetts then also moved to be close to their 21-year-old biological son, Jacob, as he attended the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.

From 2013 to 2014, when 9-year-old Natalia Grace was living alone in Lafayette, Indiana, a neighbor became aware of the situation and connected the child with Cynthia Mans. Grace moved in with Mans and her husband, Antwon (pictured), and their large brood of foster children. 

The Mans family didn't notice the violent tendencies Grace supposedly demonstrated with the Barnetts. However, Grace did purportedly bite the Mans' infant daughter. "I would say she has been violent in a typical way like most kids do. You know, most kids fight, most kids argue, but nothing unusual to where there was just crazy unrest in that sort of way," Antwon Mans said in "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks" (via Business Insider).

Sometime in 2023, Grace became dissatisfied with her life in the Mans household, and accused her adoptive parents of holding her against her will. This was compounded by the Mans having a financial stake in being Grace's legal caregivers. A lawyer working with Michael Barnett discovered that the Mans family's singular income source was payments given to foster caregivers to offset the cost of raising children or people with disabilities. After Grace left the Mans in 2023, Cynthia Mans contacted her to see if she would continue receiving her charge's Social Security payments. An investigation revealed that since 2014, Grace had received a $700 monthly benefits stipend, all of which was given directly to the Manses.

Antwon and Cynthia Mans applied to be Natalia Grace's legal guardian in 2016, and adopted her in June 2023, assuming financial and other responsibilities for the now adult. By December 2023, after living with the Manses and their 10 other children for almost a decade, Grace engineered an escape plan and pulled it off. 

As shown in "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter," witnesses that included friends of the family and neighbors alleged physical child abuse, including the use of a belt as a weapon and being locked in rooms to receive other acts of punishment. Grace refused to deny or confirm if such events ever took place, but she did allege that these adoptive parents exhibited controlling behavior and didn't allow her to speak with anyone of whom they didn't approve.

Nevertheless, Grace managed to stay in contact with Nicole (pictured) and Vince DePaul. Diagnosed with other forms of dwarfism themselves, they had attempted to adopt Grace in 2009, after her time with the Ciccones but before the Barnetts' involvement. Nicole's daughter Mackenzie drove from New York state to Nashville in December 2023. And then, like someone escaping prison by walking out the door, Grace fled her accused captors by laying in wait at a church after telling her siblings she'd join them inside. Mackenzie brought her back to her family's home, where she's lived ever since.

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

Adjusting to life with another adoptive American family was still a monumental adjustment for Natalia Grace, and one fraught with problems and issues. Initially, the main roadblock to a happy ending was the Mans' persistence in trying to reclaim custody of Grace, who they quickly discovered had moved in with the DePaul family. "They were calling Natalia constantly and trying to wheel her back in," Nicole DePaul told People. "It was just this constant thing where we were walking a fine line of not doing too much. See, she just came from this house that basically was ruled by a dictator, so I didn't want to tell her what to do."

Grace also behaved strangely. At one point, she recorded the DePauls going about their daily business in their home without their knowledge. The incident blew over, but Grace entered extensive therapy to help her cope with the effects of the events she'd been dealing with practically since birth. A doctor diagnosed her with reactive attachment disorder (RAD), which is a behavioral condition or active response often seen among people who, during childhood, spent time in group homes or endured the adoption system.

Even before the Barnetts moved their young, adopted daughter out of their home and into an apartment, the couple's actions aroused the attention of law enforcement. In 2012, the police in Westfield, Indiana, investigated the family on behalf of the FBI and immigration officials for discrepancies surrounding Natalia Grace's international adoption. The federal agencies later quietly dropped the case, but they noticed the possibility of false age reporting and immigration fraud dating back to Grace's departure from Ukraine.

In 2019, Kristine and Michael Barnett entered pleas of not guilty to charges of neglect of a dependent, having left Grace behind before their move to Canada. Three months later, additional charges of neglect of a dependent resulting in bodily injury were added, with the allegation that the Barnetts hadn't provided Grace with the pain-relieving surgeries she needed to treat her dwarfism. Charges against Kristine Barnett were dropped due to the statute of limitations passing, and because prosecutors chose to ignore the age-related matters and pursue a case alleging neglect of a person with a disability. Michael Barnett (pictured) was ultimately acquitted of his charges, too. Where are Kristine and Michael Barnett now? They're divorced.

Amidst years of legal wrangling, Grace's biological mother emerged. Anna Gava was born in 1979, making a birth year of 1989 for Grace highly unlikely. Birth and hospital records from the Ukraine also backed up a 2003 birth for Grace.

Some horror movies have a real-life inspiration, and if the most shocking allegations levied against Natalia Grace by the now adult's former adoptive parents, Kristine and Michael Barnett, seem familiar, it's probably because they mirror or allude to events in the 2009 horror movie "Orphan." In that genre-redefining horror film, a woman (played by Isabelle Furhman, pictured) from a former Soviet republic — with health issues that give her the height and appearance of a child — poses as a Russian kid to gain access to a family in the United States, whereupon she becomes a murderer. However, "Orphan" could not have been inspired by Grace's story, because the latter didn't begin to unfold until the then-child's entry into the United States in 2010, a year after the film was produced.

That timeline may be a key to Kristine Barnett's behavior throughout the story. Barnett claims that Grace tried to murder her on multiple occasions, while also putting her family at serious risk. Grace believes that Barnett's ultimately unfounded allegations of age falsification and violent attacks were taken whole cloth from "Orphan." 

"The things Kristine and Michael said that I've done is a lie. It was all copied off the movie Orphan," Grace said in "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks" (via TooFab). "Ukrainian girl, Russian girl, check. Orphan, check. All this crazy stuff, standing at the end of the bed with a knife, check."