Natalia Grace, the orphan whose bizarre abandonment made her a reality star, explained

Vox

21-03-2025

writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they're considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars.
Late in Hulu's new series Good American Family comes a moment of irony that's become all too familiar in true crime docudramas. The fictionalized Natalia Grace Barnett — at this point in the story a teen, being played by the 27-year-old Imogen Faith Reid — glowingly reads supportive comments from random internet strangers. 'I feel so bad I doubted you, Natalia,' one comment reads, 'But I guess that's what the media wanted.'
Ah, yes: the ancient narrative that the media made a complicated situation worse, being proffered by a piece of media that's currently making it worse.
Good American Family dramatizes the twisted saga of Natalia Grace, a Ukraine-born adoptee who was born in 2003, 1989, or somewhere in between, according to a litany of contradicting stories and court records. The new series' interminable eight episodes rehash the saga many Americans first learned about in 2019, when her second set of adoptive parents, Michael and Kristine Barnett, gained media attention for adopting and then abandoning her in the US when they moved to Canada without her. The Barnetts publicly claimed that their daughter was an evil, murderous 20-something con artist pretending to be a little girl.
Yes, it's the plot of the movie Orphan, but in real life. (To be clear, Natalia Grace's tale did not inspire the 2009 movie, as she was adopted in 2010, but may well have been inspired by it.) The Barnetts' behavior resulted in ultimately unsuccessful criminal charges of neglect. Though the messy details of this back and forth are recounted for viewers, including the accompanying media spectacle, the Hulu series ultimately does little to justify itself, either as entertainment or as a further examination of an abuse victim whose entire life has been lived under a magnifying glass as a result of her abuse.
Here's what to know about the saga of Natalia — and why the Hulu docuseries probably isn't the last time you'll be hearing her name, even though it probably should be.
Natalia was 6 or 7 — or maybe 8 or 9 — when she was adopted in 2010
By their own telling, Indiana residents Kristine and Michael Barnett and their three sons were an all-American family: Kristine would go on to author a much-lauded book about raising her son Jacob, who is a high-functioning child prodigy. The memoir, The Spark, was so popular it was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in 2013 — but while it details Kristine Barnett's miraculous job parenting her sons, it reportedly contains no mention whatsoever of the little girl she adopted alongside them.
The Barnetts adopted Natalia in 2010. According to Michael Barnett, they were only given 24 hours by a shady adoption agency to make a decision about adopting her, and were provided very little information about Natalia's background and medical history. What we know is that Natalia's birth mother had been born in Latvia and was living in Ukraine at the time of Natalia's birth, which was listed on Natalia's birth certificate as September 4, 2003. She placed Natalia in an orphanage. In 2008, at the age of 5, she was brought to the US by Dyan and Gary Ciccone, a New Hampshire couple with ties to an area adoption agency focused on Russian adoptees. What happened is unclear, but Natalia's unsuccessful placement underscores the often murky and dysfunctional process of adoption, especially international adoptions, which can exploit children.
Imogen Faith Reid, Ellen Pompeo, and Mark Duplass in Good American Family. Disney/Ser Baffo
The Barnetts immediately ran into problems with the adoption. They claimed that Natalia, who was born with dwarfism, was showing signs of puberty, including menstruation and pubic hair, despite being only 6 or 7 according to her official birth certificate. They also claimed that Natalia had tried repeatedly to kill them, including by placing thumbtacks on the stairs, pouring Pine Sol into coffee, wielding knives, and allegedly pulling Kristine Barnett into an electric fence. According to Michael Barnett, their response to these incidents included begging the police to arrest their 7-year-old; police declined. Child services were alerted to the situation, however, and began investigating the couple's treatment of their daughter. During the same period, the Barnetts had Natalia seen by various medical experts, apparently in attempts to determine her 'real' age. Medical providers in the Barnetts' lives have since come forward to allege that they told the Barnetts Natalia was a child.
To this day, it's not fully clear whether the Barnetts actually believed their own lie about Natalia being an adult, or whether they just made it up as an excuse to be rid of her. Kristine Barnett has fallen back on the medical advice she claims she was given by experts, while Michael Barnett has emphasized the court rulings concerning her age; the new Hulu docuseries depicts him as being manipulated by Kristine's own narcissism, though not without culpability.
In 2012, the Barnetts successfully petitioned a probate court to change Natalia's official birth year from 2003 to 1989, which made her legally 22 years old instead of 8. According to court documents, the change was made 'based on age estimates provided by a primary care physician and a social worker,' without holding an evidentiary hearing or providing Natalia with her own legal representative in the matter. This also meant that the child services case was closed, since Natalia was now legally an adult.
Around the time of this ruling, Natalia spent nine weeks in a mental hospital. She also spent time at a halfway house. The Barnetts rented two subsequent apartments for her, including one in Lafayette, Indiana — a decision made, according to court testimony from a state police detective, 'Because Kristine said Lafayette is a white-trash town and nobody is going to care or worry about [Natalia].' The Barnetts also appeared to disbelieve that the physical disabilities associated with Natalia's medical condition were real; though she had used a walker since she was a child, the apartment they rented for her was on the second floor of a house with no easy street access. After relocating Natalia to this isolated, inaccessible house in Lafayette, the Barnetts moved to Canada with their sons in 2013, leaving her behind. Natalia never saw Kristine Barnett again.
The couple divorced in 2014 — but their entanglement with Natalia was only just beginning.
The courts perpetuate a wrong and then fail to redress it
Following her abandonment by the Barnetts in 2013, Natalia was taken in by Cynthia and Antwon Mans and their children. (Some reports say the Mans have 10 children, others say five.) Over the next decade, Natalia and others tried repeatedly to have her age change reversed in the courts, only for the courts to reaffirm that she was an adult. Natalia was legally considered an adult for most of her childhood. At one point, per court records, the Mans attempted to gain legal guardianship over Natalia, only for Michael Barnett to block their efforts because, he claimed, Natalia was an adult.
'All I was told was, 'You're 22 now,'' Natalia later told ID's multi-season docuseries about the saga, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace. ''Whenever somebody asks you what your age is, you say you're 22 and you tried to murder your family.' I was taught to lie.'
Prosecutors soon became interested in Natalia's case. Confusion over Natalia's actual age began to dominate the investigation into the Barnetts' behavior, which was serious enough that they were each charged separately in 2019 with criminal counts related to both child neglect and neglect of a dependent [adult]. The child neglect charges were ultimately dismissed due to the outstanding quandary of her age.
In 2023, a DNA lab conducted testing that seemed to conclusively put the matter of Natalia's age to rest: she was likely around two years older than the age indicated by her birth certificate at the time of her adoption, born around 2001. At the time of her adoption, she would have been 8 or 9, and at the time of her abandonment in Lafayette, she would have been 11 or 12 — not 23, as the court system legally claimed.
But because the original court ruling still stood, in 2020, prosecutors had to drop all charges related to child neglect. At Michael Barnett's 2022 trial for neglect of a dependent adult, Natalia testified against her adopted father. She alleged that she had fallen repeatedly while attempting to navigate her inaccessible apartment, and that the Barnetts had left her to fend for herself without teaching her how to access her disability payments or perform basic tasks like laundry or food preparation.
Michael Barnett's lawyer, however, was able to successfully allege that at 23 — the only age Natalia was legally permitted to acknowledge under the court ruling — she should have been able to do all of those tasks as a functioning adult. Defense attorneys also implied that the Mans family were manipulating and exploiting Natalia — allegations of stealing benefits that would linger after the trial. Jurors ultimately found Michael Barnett not guilty on the neglect charge, and the pending charges against Kristine Barnett were subsequently dropped.
From there, despite the mudslinging, it seemed as though things were finally resolved between Natalia and the Barnetts. By that point, however, the Barnetts, Natalia, and the Mans were something more than a set of dysfunctional squabbling families — they were all reality stars.
From one messy situation to another
In late 2019, the news of criminal charges laid against the Barnetts began to make headlines, and the lives of all involved irrevocably changed. Tabloid media quickly labeled Natalia a ''Psycho' dwarf,' and Natalia and the Mans family went on Dr. Phil — and all of this was within weeks of the story coming to light.
Then came ID's multi-season docuseries, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, which began airing in 2023 shortly after the court proceedings. By that point, Natalia was living with the Mans family, who the docuseries framed as her saviors. The Mans, who claimed Natalia had never been dangerous at all, formally adopted her in 2023 — when she was around 21 — in a splashy event that made up part of the show's second season.
The pressure to provide TV drama may have been too much for the Mans family, however. Despite caring for Natalia for nearly a decade without issues, they abruptly dramatically leaned into the 'Natalia is evil' theme, with Antwon Mans calling the show's producers to allege that her behavior had been disturbing and selfish. The ID producers, naturally, revealed this development as a shocking twist and a season-ending cliffhanger.
In the documentary's third season, Natalia accused the Mans family of physical and emotional abuse. To the Hollywood Reporter, ID president Jason Sarlanis described the docuseries' decision to delve into Natalia's time with the Mans as 'do[ing] right by our audience' — whether anyone considered doing right by Natalia and her new family dynamic was less clear.
In 2023, Natalia left the Mans family's Nashville residence and moved in with yet another family: The DePauls, a family of little people who reportedly wanted to adopt Natalia all the way back in 2009, prior to her adoption by the Barnetts. The ID series filmed them helping Natalia dramatically 'escape' from the Mans in the middle of the night, into a new wholesome life with a family who hopefully could finally understand her.
A happy ending? Yes and no. While there's little left to say about Natalia's story at this point, it's clearly going to keep going in the public eye. In January 2025, People placed now 23-year-old Natalia on the cover, with the lurid headline 'Victim or Villain?' even though years of reporting within its own pages make the answer abundantly clear. Hulu's Good American Family similarly plays with blaming a disabled child for her own abuse. On top of that, the show drags out over eight episodes and features a parade of flat, dull characters. Ellen Pompeo as Kristine is especially one-note, narcissistic and brittle with little nuance, while Mark Duplass as Michael goes through a histrionic and unbelievable series of emotional swings as he wrestles with who to believe. The Mans are depicted as well-meaning grifters who rescue Natalia but aren't without their own issues.
Though it ultimately fully accepts the framing that the Barnetts emotionally and physically abused and gaslit Natalia to a heartbreaking degree, it also initially perpetuates the idea that Natalia's behavior is alarming and disturbing. Above all, casting 27-year-old Reid to play a child 20 years younger at the time the series starts does more to confuse the narrative than clarify it. While the narrative depicts Natalia as finding closure, it's hard not to see the show leaving the door open for another season, just as ID has done again and again.
What's more, Nicole DePaul recently alleged on Facebook that the docudrama had not compensated Natalia in any way for the use of her story — though they were, she claimed, compensating Kristine Barnett, perhaps in the hopes of staving off a lawsuit. (Hulu did not respond for comment.)
This wouldn't be the first time that a high-profile true crime docudrama has been castigated for exploiting victims. But instead of learning any lessons from those other cases, or even from Natalia's own story, it seems we're destined to repeat these same mistakes in the quest for drama — with diminishing returns.