What age was Natalia Grace at the time of her adoption? DNA reports finally reveal the truth

Natalia Grace, who was adopted by Michael and Kristine Barnett in 2010, was accused by her adoptive parents for the longest time. The couple claimed that Natalia, who has a rare form of dwarfism, was not actually a child but an adult woman with criminal intent who wanted to harm the family. But, recently a blood test seemingly confirmed that Natalia is currently around 22 years old, which means the Barnetts adopted her when she was 9. 

What did Natalia say about this revelation? 

Natalia Grace, who has always claimed that she was a child at the time of her adoption, insisted that she was around 20 years old in 2023. Her claims were seemingly proved to be right by a recent blood test conducted by the TruDiagnostic medical lab, whose results concluded that she is around 22 years old now. 

In the premiere episode of Investigation Discovery (ID) docu-series The Curious Case of Natalia Grace’s season 2, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, she said, “This one little piece of paper throws every single lie that the Barnetts have said right into the trash with a match.” She also said that this is huge because now all the lies that the Barnetts ever said are out in the open as this report proves that she was telling the truth about her age, and she was not the monster her adoptive parents painted her to be. 

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The report also means that Natalia was 9 years old when she was adopted by the Barnetts and only 12 years old when the couple abandoned her and left to live in Canada with their biological children. 

What did the Barnetts do to Natalia? 

Natalia, whom the Barnetts adopted in the spring of 2010, has a rare form of dwarfism known as  Spondyloepiphyseal Dysplasia Congenita. Her adoptive parents claimed that Natalia was not a child at all but merely pretending to be one and that she wanted to harm their family. 

She was accused of various misconducts including placing thumbtacks on the stairs, pulling Kristine towards an electric fence to try and harm her, and also poisoning her coffee. Two years after adopting Natalia, the couple successfully petitioned the Marion County Court to have her birthdate on her Ukrainian records changed from 2003 to 1989, making her 22 years old. 

After a year of that petition, the couple, along with their three biological sons moved to Canada, leaving Natalia alone in an apartment in Lafayette, Indiana. She was taken in by Cynthia and Antwon Mans when they noticed her struggling to live alone. A case was later filed against the Barnetts alleging negligence but Michael was not found guilty and the case against Kristine was dropped. 

In the documentary by Investigation Discovery, it was disclosed that Natalia was evaluated by an endocrinologist in 2010 and that they determined her age to be somewhere between 9 to 11. The documentary episode also includes an interview with a dentist who claims that Kristine came to her to determine Natalia’s age by her teeth. The dentist did an x-ray on Natalia and determined that she had 12 baby teeth, which means Kristine already knew about Natalia’s real age. 

The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks started airing on ID on 1st January. In the new season, she is also going to confront her adoptive father Michael Barnett. Her story is also going to be the inspiration for Hulu’s upcoming series Untitled Orphan Project. 

ALSO READ: The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Where to watch the new docuseries?

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