Diksha Sundriyal
Hulu’s true crime drama series, ‘Good American Family,’ tells the story of the Barnett family. It begins with Kristine and Michael Barnett adopting a girl named Natalia Grace, believing she could be the piece that completes their family. Soon, they start to notice things about the girl that convince them that she is not a girl at all but a full-grown woman. However, that’s just their side of the story. Created by Katie Robbins, the show also tells the story from the perspective of Natalia Grace to show that things are often not what they seem. Over the course of eight episodes, a complex tale is woven for the audience, which checks off all the boxes of a Hollywood thriller. However, the story is more disturbing because it is inspired by real events.
Good American Family Captures Natalia Grace’s Tumultuous Story
The events depicted in ‘Good American Story’ are inspired by the real accounts of the Barnett family and Natalia Grace, and for the most part, the series uses the stuff that has already been talked about by the family members in the media. However, in presenting these events, the show’s creators have taken some creative liberties, filling the gaps in the narrative to add more weight to the story and, most importantly, capturing different points of view to examine the case rather than give a verdict on it. It must be noted that none of the Barnetts and Natalia Grace were involved in the making of the show, though Michael Barnett reportedly sold his rights to the story for the TV show.
Natalia Grace was born in Ukraine and has spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, a bone development disorder. She came to America in 2008 as part of an adoption program. Kristine and Michael Barnett came into her life in 2010. The Indiana couple came to Florida to complete the process of the emergency adoption. They were told that Natalia had been abandoned due to undisclosed reasons by a family that had adopted her. The Barnetts, too, didn’t bother with the details as they were happy to welcome a daughter into their home. (They already had three sons.) Soon, however, problems started to appear within the family, and everything seemed to circle around Natalia.
Kristine and Michael Barnett Made Serious Claims Against Natalia
Over the years, Kristine and Michael Barnett have made several claims about their time with Natalia. It started with small things, like a day at the beach. Kristine talked about the time they took her to the beach for the first time. By this time, they knew that she had trouble walking due to her surgeries. When their sons went into the water, she, too, expressed her desire to be carried into the ocean. The couple claims that when they asked her to wait a few minutes, she ran into the ocean herself, perplexing them about her trouble with walking.
A major concern for the Barnetts was Natalia’s age. While her birth certificate from the adoption agency showed her birth year to be 2003, they started to believe that she was older than that. Kristine claims that there were several things about the girl that convinced her that she was not a child. She claimed that, when giving Natalia a bath, she noticed the girl had full pubic hair, and later, it was found that she was also having her periods but kept it a secret. She also claims that Natalia could not understand Ukrainian and never revealed anything about her time back in her native country. Another of her claims was that Natalia was acting beyond her age, using vocabulary that was too advanced for a seven-year-old child, not liking dolls, and trying to make friends with teenagers. These minor claims are nothing in front of the other violent activities that Kristine and Michael accused Natalia of.
They alleged that she had tried to kill them and also shared her plans to hurt their sons. Kristine claimed that her adoptive daughter tried to push her on an electric fence. She claimed that, once, she found Natalia putting something in her drink that she believed to be poisonous, like bleach. She claimed that Natalia would stand over them in the middle of the night and that they got so scared of the possibility of her hurting someone that they had to hide all the knives and other sharp objects in their house. Kristine claimed that, once, she saw Natalia attacking a boy on a baby monitor when no one else was in the room; that Natalia once jumped out of a moving car; that she was smearing blood and other bodily fluids on the wall; that she was hearing voices (which pointed towards her mental illness); and that she drew pictures and wrote stuff about wanting to kill her adoptive family members and burying them in the backyard.
The Conflict in Natalia’s Age Eventually Led to Her Moving Out of the Barnett House
When things seemed to have gotten out of hand, the Barnetts took Natalia to therapy. They claimed that the doctors confirmed their suspicions about her age by revealing that she had psychological problems that are only found in adults. Natalia spent a year in and out of St Vincent Indianapolis Stress Center, where she was treated for psychiatric disorders and was later sent to a state-run psychiatric unit. The couple also claims that during this time, she confessed to being older than she was made out to be.
Natalia Grace has categorically denied all the allegations made against her by the Barnetts. She said that things had been good with the Barnetts in the early days of her arrival in the family but got bad after she had surgery. She claims that she was the one being abused by the family, especially Kristine, who Natalia alleges tried to overdose her. As for her age, several documents were revealed to have been in her support. A probable cause affidavit that was filed years later stated that in 2010, Natalia was examined at the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital, where her age was established to be eight years at the time. Another report that the affidavit mentions is that of the Indianapolis hospital, where a June 2012 skeletal survey placed Natalia at 11 years of age.
Reportedly, Natalia’s birth mother also came into the picture at one point, where it was confirmed that Natalia was born around 2003. Despite all this, Natalia’s birth records were changed in 2012 by a Marion County judge to reflect her birth year to be 1989, not 2003, which made her 22 years old at the time instead of 11. The probable cause affidavit revealed that the Barnetts told Natalia to tell people she was 22. According to Kristine Barnett, Natalia came out of the psychiatric care facility in August 2012, which is when they rented an apartment for her, and she was put under the supervision of Aspire Indiana, a state healthcare provider. They also got her signed up for other stuff like her social security number and food stamps. After a while, Natalia was evicted from the apartment, and they rented a new apartment for her in Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, in July 2013.
The Barnetts Were Charged With Child Neglect
After Natalia was moved into her Lafayette apartment, the Barnetts moved to Canada as their son, Jacob, was accepted into the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. Kristine Barnett claimed that by this time, communication had halted between them and Natalia. She expressed her concerns about her adoptive daughter going off medication. She also claimed that Natalia seemed to have found a new family. In February 2014, Michael and Kristine got separated, and he filed for divorce. Around the same time, Natalia was evicted from her apartment. By this time, she seemed to have bonded with Cynthia and Antwon Mans, who attempted to get her guardianship, but the case was dismissed in January 2018 as it would mean that the court would have to upturn the ruling on Natalia being an adult.
In 2019, the police showed up at Michael’s door, who had remarried and moved back to Indiana. According to the police report, he said that he and Kristine knew Natalia was not an adult when they set her up in an apartment and left for Canada. Later, Michael appeared in an episode of the Investigation Discovery docuseries, ‘The Curious Case Of Natalia Grace,’ where he claimed that he, too, was a victim of abuse by his former wife, who threatened to take their children away from him if he didn’t do as she asked. Shortly after Michael’s interview with the police, charges of neglect of a dependent were filed against Kristine and Michael Barnett. Both turned themselves in and got out by posting bonds of around $5000 each. Eventually, the court acquitted Michael, while the charges against Kristine were dropped.
Natalia’s Life After the Barnetts Remained Equally Turbulent
By the time the court cleared the Barnetts of the charges against them, Natalia was legally adopted by the Mans couple. She adapted to their lifestyle and helped them care for ten other children in the household. They lived in Indiana for a few years but later moved to Nashville, Tennessee. At first, things seemed to be going well here, too, but things took a bad turn pretty soon. In the Investigation Discovery docuseries, it was revealed that the Manses had been mistreating her.
The witness accounts in the series claimed that she was whipped with a belt, locked in her room, and slapped, to name a few, by the couple, though Natalia herself doesn’t seem to have verified these claims. Meanwhile, Natalia also connected with Nicole and Vince DePaul, who had tried to adopt her in 2009. She also had a boyfriend named Neil, who she met on Facebook. In 2023, she left the Mans household and has been living with the DePauls ever since. She plans to become a teacher and is looking forward to a brighter future for herself.
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