The story has gone viral about this Ukrainian girl who is supposedly a 30 something year old woman posing as a child. Her age has been inconsistent with the year she was born in because her medical doctors contradicted her age with tests the Barnetts had her go through. In 2012, her bone structure showed she was a 11 year old and then it showed she was a 14 year old. In 2010, she was eight years old which wouldn’t be possible if she was born in 2003. The Barnetts claimed she tried to kill their sons and also stood over their bed with a knife and also tried to poison the mom and also tried pushing her into an electric fence. I saw a video on youtube made by a 14 year old child that had Natalia in her family when she was little before she was passed off to the Barnetts. I read in the comments by her that her parents couldn’t go through the adoption because they didn’t have the money to so she was passed off to the Barnetts. People have many reasons why they believe the Barnetts and I have my own reasons why I think the Barnetts are liars and the mom being a narcissist. I will summarize why I believe Natalia.
“She has a full set of adult teeth”
So a girl in my son’s second grade class had fully grown front adult teeth but if you look at her early photo, you could see she had baby teeth in the back. That photo was taken around 2011-2012 so that would put her 7-9 years of age, she was not 6 in that photo as the Barnetts claimed.
“She doesn’t have an accent”
Kids under age ten who learn a second language are not going to have accents.
“She didn’t understand her own Ukrainian language”
My mom’s father is from Hungary and he didn’t know any English till 1st grade and he also doesn’t know his first language because he had been speaking English for too long. He also doesn’t have an accent either.
“How can an 8 year old live on her own for a year?”
If you watched the episode on Dr. Phil show, she didn’t live on her own for a year and she had neighbors that helped her and her landlord helped her too. She ate on canned foods the Barnetts had left her and they paid her rent and bills while they moved to Canada.
“She told everyone she was 22.”
When you are a child and are told you are a certain age, you believe them. Kids believe lot of stuff an adult tells them.
“The police took her back to her home when they found her.”
Her legal age was turned to being born in 1989 so she was legally an adult.
“How can a random family just take her in than going to the police?”
My baby sitter was also abandoned by her mother and was born in the streets and she came to my neighbors when she was 12 or 13. They took her in and bought her clothes, took her to the dentist and doctor and put her in school and raised her as their daughter and they also never adopted her. She would be in her 40’s now and she baby sat me when I was 3-6 years of age.
“She stood over their bed holding up a knife, she tried to poison them, she put knives on top of the fridge, tried pushing her mom into the electric fence.”
I am not buying any of this because it makes zero sense. She could barely climb and move around and her condition got worse as she got older. Also Mrs. Barnett took it out of proportion when she had some chemical in her hand while cleaning and she pushed her mom’s coffee aside so she could get to the chemical, she never poured any in. She was out on the farm with her family and she fell against her mother and there was a electric fence nearby. Narcissists do this and will exaggerate and fabricate. I am sure Natalia did have behavior but that is common in adopted kids from foster care and orphanages and RAD is common too.
“She had pubic hair and was getting periods”
Ever heard of precocious puberty? 8 year olds can get periods too. I have even seen a 7 year old with breasts when I was 11 and she was tall for her age and she didn’t even look 7. I have even heard if a 5 year old getting their period and she had precocious puberty. They have puberty blockers for this reason and they can give them to the child with precocious puberty. They use it on transgender kids too.
“She never grew an inch”
She had dwarfism, did the Barnetts think dwarfs outgrow growth retardation? They don’t grow to be past 3 foot 5 or past 3 feet. I mean geez, how stupid can the Barnetts be? This is also a bad argument to use to justify what they thought. All this does is makes them look stupid. Either they are stupid or they are just using this to justify what they did. But hey, narcissists think crazy things to justify their abuse. They even think infants have the ability to manipulate and have malicious intention behind their crying so they neglect them as infants. Of course infants manipulate when they get to around 8 months but that is normal behavior. It doesn’t make them a bad baby or evil and they are not doing it to ruin your day and make you miserable.
“She looks 30, she looks 24, she doesn’t look 16”
How many 16 year olds look 16? I looked like a young adult at 16. My brothers could pass off as young men in their 20’s at 16 because of their facial hair. If you think you can tell between a teen and an adult, that is pretty naive thinking there. I have seen a 14 year old I thought was 21 until she said she was 14 when a stranger walked by asking her if she is registered to vote. At 12 years old I could easily pass off as a high schooler because of my fully developed body and breasts and my mom was not going to let me wear clothes that showed my figure because then guys would have hit on me and teen boys and I would not be able to understand because I was too innocent. I would not have read their cues and understand what is going on and it would have caused problems. I may have been “asking for it.”
“She spoke like a teenager”
Do they not know about kids being advanced? Maybe she was a gifted child. There were things my brother understood many kids his age would not have understood because he was advanced.
“She wasn’t into toys and was into things older girls would have been into”
And here is more ignorance here, some kids have higher age interests and the fact she was adopted and came from Ukraine. If she grew up with no toys, she isn’t going to be interested in toys.
“She remembers too well and most kids wouldn’t remember that well from when they were 8”
Some kids have better memories than others and if you have read memoir books, are all those people lying because they all seem to remember too well from their childhood under age ten?
So it looks to me the Barnetts were prejudice and ignorant about precocious puberty and found reasons to believe she was not this 6 year old girl the adoption agency claimed her to be. And if she had behavior problems, why wasn’t she taken to a psychiatrist or to a therapist that specialized in adoption? Oh wait, they did take her there, she was in a mental hospital in 2012 and got discharged in 2013. There she claims she was older than she really is, well of course, any kid will make claims they are told. If you are 8 years old and are told you are really 22, you will believe them.
Instead they had to make up a story using Orphan and fabricate it and exaggerate her behavior. Why weren’t they suing the adoption agency for giving her Natalia?
Also you could tell from her early photos Natalia has indeed aged and she has bigger teeth too and more adult teeth.
So my crazy theory is; Natalia had behavior issues that is consistent in kids who are adopted from other countries and the Barnetts didn’t want to deal with it so they fabricate a story and exaggerate and even get her age changed to 22 so they can abandon her and not face any charges. They even found a doctor that would agree with them. They kept going from doctor to doctor until they found the one that would say she is an adult and told them what they wanted to hear.
Also if you read about child abuse and child neglect and trauma, kids with it tend to be more mature at their age than other kids. It’s part of surviving. Natalia was basically abandoned and had suffered trauma so of course she would be more mature at her age. Kids also learn life skills earlier too than other kids because they have to to survive. Read any memoir books out there written by people who were neglected as kids and they also seemed to be more mature at their age and know more than an average child. They had to do it.
Why would the Barnetts do this? I do not know. Natalia doesn’t know either and she doesn’t want to see them go to jail and stuff but she also doesn’t want them to do this to another child. I say the Barnetts are lucky Natalia doesn’t want revenge on them and doesn’t wish badness on them.
Here is the video I saw that convinced me:
Before the video, I was confused because of the contradictions I was hearing. Part of me was hoping Natalia is indeed a adult that is a sociopath because it would be very horrible what the Barnetts did to her if she was indeed a child. Perhps this family can testify against the Barnetts in court because they would be her witnesses. Also the woman who claims to be her birth mother could also perhaps testify too against the Barnetts and the adoption agency too and all the other doctors who said she was 11 or 14 years of age based on testing results and maybe people who knew Natalia in their school and her neighbors and the landlord. It would be interesting to see what charges they get in January. I also think other things they said about her were all lies like her having a period or the fact she tried to kill them or standing over them with a knife. Her new parents that have had her for 7 years deny any violence from her or deny she has ever had a period.
There are still contradictions in the media I am still confused about like living on her own for a year and Natalia saying she was abandoned in 2014 when her new set of parents say they have had her with them for 7 years now so that would mean they had her since 2012. So she would have been 8-9 years at the time. It’s possible the parents might be off by a few years of how long they had her because they can’t remember. Not everyone has a good memory of time stamps.
Also don’t adopt a child from foster care or from overseas if you don’t want a kid with a behavior problem or with RAD. I am not saying Natalia had RAD. When you wish to adopt a kid from a foreign country or from foster care, there is a higher change that kid will have behavior, higher chance for RAD too.
It looks like the Barnetts have pretty much ruined her life. It will effect her employment, maybe getting into college, she can’t go to high school because she is now legally 30, people might not want her around because they believe the media what the Barnetts said but there are also people out there who do believe her so she still has a chance and since she has a disability, she can get on disability. She can’t get SSDI because she has no work history but she can get SSI. Hopefully she will get her GED still and go to college and she can still get homeschooled. Because she is legally 30, she can do things adults can do and even vote too. Watching the show, it looked she held no ill thoughts towards them and didn’t seem to be mad at them nor upset with them and didn’t seem to wish any bad things on them. I would find what they did unforgivable but not everyone holds a grudge and some just find forgiveness like it’s that easy.
My other crazy theory is the Barnetts made up such a claim because in the past, when parents would send back their violent kids to their home country and that one Ohio family that abandoned their 9 year old child at social services, all those parents have been judged harshly and called lazy for giving up on their child and all those kids had RAD. These parents here made up some crazy story basing it on the movie Orphan so people will be on their side and it worked.