'The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks' will premiere Jan. 1 on ID.
Natalia Grace is coming face-to-face with Michael Barnett. In a clip from the upcoming three-part docuseries The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, Natalia confronts her former adoptive father.
"Why did you adopt me in the first place? Why?" Natalia asks Michael, who, along with his then-wife Kristine, adopted Natalia in 2010 with the belief that she was a 6-year-old orphaned girl from Ukraine.
Eventually, the then-couple, who didn't know Natalia had a form of dwarfism called spondyloepiphyseal, became suspicious that she was an adult who wanted to harm them and their children. The Barnetts soon had Natalia's legal age changed from 6 to 22, before moving to Canada and leaving Natalia behind in an Indiana apartment.
Michael and Kristine, who are now divorced, were eventually charged with abandoning Natalia. Michael was found not guilty of three counts of neglect and conspiracy to commit neglect of a dependent in 2022, while charges against Kristine were dropped in March 2023.
"Many of these questions there's not going to be a single answer to," Michael says. "Look, I've learned recently you and I have the same monster. Kristine. We are here because we both were incredible victims of an otherworldly type of abuse."
Natalia questions Michael on how he was a victim, and he alleges, "I had the same monster you did. I was exceptionally controlled and put down and threatened, was minimalized. Anything that was who I was was ripped from me and I was guided and instructed to be exactly what she wanted me to be."
As for how he was threatened, Michael claims, "Her favorite threat was taking the boys away from me and making sure I would never see them ever again."
Natalia pushes back, asking Michael why he never left his marriage.
"That's the best question ever. I tried," he says. "These answers aren't going to be what you're looking for to a degree, but I tried to leave her no less than 10 times. I ended up in the hospital regularly over it."
"Why did you marry her?" Natalia asks Michael.
"That's a hell of a question," he responds.
Michael's use of the word "hell" then prompts someone off camera to ask him not to curse, setting off a bickering match between Michael and others behind the scenes. Eventually fed up, Michael removes his mic and walks off the set.
Natalia Speaks dives headfirst into the questions, controversies, and secrets unearthed in The Curious Case, which premiered earlier this year, but this time, with Natalia sharing her side of the story.
The docuseries retraces her adoption saga and Michael and Kristine's allegations from Natalia's perspective, offering insight into what really went on behind closed doors in the Barnett home and how much truth there is to their allegations.
Natalia Speaks also features previously unseen evidence and footage, as well as new theories and testimony from an array of voices, including the retired FBI agents who initially investigated Natalia's case, genetic experts who help determine Natalia's true age, and the Tippecanoe County Deputy Prosecutor Jackie Starbuck, who prosecuted Michael in his October 2022 trial.
Additionally, the docuseries sheds light into Natalia's next chapter, offering a portrait of her life with her new adoptive family and exclusive interviews with her adoptive parents, Bishop Antown and Christina Manns.
The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks will premiere across three consecutive nights on ID beginning Monday, Jan. 1, airing nightly from 9-11 p.m. ET/PT.
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