Natalia Grace (Barnett) Mans (born September 4, 2003) [1] [2] [3] is a Ukrainian-born American with dwarfism, who, in 2010, was adopted by an American family but abandoned by them two years later. Barnett's adoptive parents claimed that Barnett was a legal adult, and, in 2012, they successfully sought a court order legally changing her birth year from 2003 to 1989. [1] However, through an August 2023 DNA test, the health testing company TruDiagnostic estimated that Grace was about 22 years old, [i] meaning she was around 9 years old when her adoptive parents abandoned her. [2] [3] Barnett is the subject of two television series, the 2023–2024 series The Curious Case of Natalia Grace (re-titled to The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks for season 2) and the upcoming Hulu TV series Good American Family .
Natalia Grace was born in Ukraine to Anna Volodymyrivna Gava of Mykolaiv. [4] [5] [6] After birth, she was placed in an orphanage in Ukraine. [7] She was diagnosed with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, a rare form of dwarfism. [7] She came to the United States as an adoptee and was adopted by Kristine and Michael Barnett in the spring of 2010. Natalia had a previous adoptive placement in the United States and multiple temporary placements prior to her adoption by the Barnetts. [7] [8] Her former adoptive parents were the Ciccones. She took the name Natalia Grace Barnett. [8]
In 2012, the Barnetts successfully petitioned the Marion County court to change Natalia's Ukrainian birth records to indicate a 1989 birth date, which legally changed her age from 8 to 22. [8] In July 2013, the Barnetts moved Natalia to an apartment in Westfield, Indiana, and later Lafayette, Indiana. The Barnetts then moved along with their biological children to Canada, leaving Natalia alone in the Lafayette apartment. [8] Shortly after being left alone in the Lafayette apartment, Natalia was invited to live with Bishop Antwon and Cynthia Mans, who noticed that Natalia struggled to live on her own. [9] The Barnetts were charged with neglect of a dependent but Michael was later found not guilty. [10] [7]
The prosecutors for the neglect case against the Barnetts were able to locate Natalia's birth mother in Ukraine. Natalia's mother was identified as Anna Volodymyrivna Gava who was born April 20, 1979, in Latvia. DNA testing confirmed Gava as Natalia's biological mother. If Natalia's court-assigned birth date of 1989 were correct, Gava would have given birth to Natalia at 10 years of age. The prosecutors also obtained birth and hospital records from Ukraine which support Natalia's original September 4, 2003, birth date. The prosecutors were barred from presenting the evidence that Natalia was a minor child born in 2003 when she was left to live alone in an apartment, and the neglect case was tried based on Natalia's disability, not her age. [11] [12] [13]
Cynthia Mans, who took Natalia in after discovering her abandoned in the Lafayette apartment, said she believed that Kristine Barnett was inspired to legally change Natalia's age by the 2009 film Orphan. The Barnetts claimed that Natalia was lying about her age and also exhibited sociopathic behavior which is similar to the plot of that film. The Manses said that Natalia has not exhibited sociopathic behavior while living in their home. [14] [15] [16] In 2019, Natalia was on an episode of Dr. Phil. [15] Her life is the subject of the 2023 Investigation Discovery series The Curious Case of Natalia Grace (re-titled to The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks for season 2). [7] Her story is the basis of the upcoming Hulu TV series Good American Family . [17] [18]
Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parents to the adoptive parents.
Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring in an illegal way, with the intent of never resuming or reasserting guardianship. The phrase is typically used to describe the physical abandonment of a child. Still, it can also include severe cases of neglect and emotional abandonment, such as when parents fail to provide financial and emotional support for children over an extended period. An abandoned child is referred to as a foundling. Baby dumping refers to parents leaving a child younger than 12 months in a public or private place with the intent of terminating their care for the child. It is also known as rehoming when adoptive parents use illegal means, such as the internet, to find new homes for their children. In the case where child abandonment is anonymous within the first 12 months, it may be referred to as secret child abandonment.
Filiation is the legal term for the recognized legal status of the relationship between family members, or more specifically the legal relationship between parent and child. As described by the Government of Quebec:
Filiation is the relationship which exists between a child and the child’s parents, whether the parents are of the same or the opposite sex. The relationship can be established by blood, by law in certain cases, or by a judgment of adoption. Once filiation has been established, it creates rights and obligations for both the child and the parents, regardless of the circumstances of the child’s birth.
The international adoption of South Korean children started around 1953 as a measure to take care of the large number of mixed children that became orphaned during and after the Korean War. It quickly evolved to include orphaned Korean children. Religious organizations in the United States, Australia, and many Western European nations slowly developed the apparatus that sustained international adoption as a socially integrated system.
Closed adoption is a process by which an infant is adopted by another family, and the record of the biological parent(s) is kept sealed. Often, the biological father is not recorded—even on the original birth certificate. An adoption of an older child who already knows their biological parent(s) cannot be made closed or secret. This used to be the most traditional and popular type of adoption, peaking in the decades of the post-World War II Baby Scoop Era. It still exists today, but it exists alongside the practice of open adoption. The sealed records effectively prevent the adoptee and the biological parents from finding, or even knowing anything about each other. However, the emergence of non-profit organizations and private companies to assist individuals with their sealed records has been effective in helping people who want to connect with biological relatives to do so.
Interracial adoption refers to the act of placing a child of one racial or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another racial or ethnic group.
Beulah George "Georgia" Tann was an American social worker and child trafficker who operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society, an unlicensed adoption agency in Memphis, Tennessee. Tann used the home as a front for her black market baby adoption scheme from the 1920s to 1950. Young children were kidnapped and then sold to wealthy families, abused, or—in some instances—murdered. A state investigation into numerous cases of adoption fraud led to the institution's closure in 1950. Tann died of cancer before the investigation made its findings public.
The Adoption and Safe Families Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 19, 1997, after having been approved by the United States Congress earlier in the month.
Tennessee Children's Home Society was a chain of orphanages that operated in the state of Tennessee during the first half of the twentieth century. It is most often associated with Georgia Tann, its Memphis branch operator and child trafficker who was involved in the kidnapping of children and their illegal adoptions.
The "Baby Jessica" case was a highly publicized custody battle in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the early 1990s between Jan and Roberta DeBoer, the couple who attempted to adopt the child, and her biological parents, Daniel Schmidt and Cara Clausen. In August 1993, the supreme courts of Iowa and Michigan ordered her returned to Schmidt, who named her Anna Jacqueline Schmidt. The case was widely publicized as the "Baby Jessica" case after the name given her by the DeBoers. The case name is In re Clausen 442 Mich. 648 (1993).
Girl, Missing is a 2006 English-language young adult thriller novel by Sophie McKenzie.
Child laundering is a tactic used in illegal or fraudulent international adoptions. It may involve child trafficking and child acquisition through payment, deceit or force. The children may then be held in sham orphanages while formal adoption processes are used to send them to adoptive parents in another country.
Adoption in France is codified in the French Civil Code in two distinct forms: simple adoption and plenary adoption.
Orphanhood in Romania became prevalent as a consequence of the Socialist Republic of Romania's natalist policy under Nicolae Ceaușescu. Its effectiveness led to an increase in birth rates at the expense of adequate family planning and reproductive rights. Its consequences were most felt with the collapse of the regime's social safety net during the 1980's Romanian austerity period, which led to widespread institutional neglect of the needs of orphans, with severe consequences in their health, including high rates of HIV infection in children, and well-being. A series of international and governmental interventions have taken place since the 1990s to improve the conditions in orphanages and reform the country's child protection system.
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, 570 U.S. 637 (2013), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which held that several sections of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) do not apply to Native American biological fathers who are not custodians of a Native American child. The court held that the procedures required by the ICWA to end parental rights do not apply when the child has never lived with the father. Additionally, the requirement to make extra efforts to preserve the Native American family also does not apply, nor is the preferred placement of the child in another Native American family required when no other party has formally sought to adopt the child.
Adoption does not exist formally as a practice in Jewish Law (Halacha), although rabbinic texts were not uniform on whether or not they recognized the validity of adoption and several examples of adoption take place in the Hebrew Bible and texts from the Second Temple Judaism. The Hebrew word for adoption ‘אימוץ’ (immutz), which derives from the verb ‘אמץ’ (amatz) in Psalm 80 verse 16 and 18 meaning ‘to make strong’, was not introduced until the modern age. Jewish perspectives towards adoption promote two contradictory messages towards nurture and nature. On the one hand, Judaism expresses favourable attitudes towards adoption across religious movements and is widely viewed as a good deed (mitzvah). Based on the Talmudic teachings that when one raises an orphan in their home, "scripture ascribes it to him as though he had begotten him," rabbis have argued that the commandment of procreation can also be fulfilled through the act of adoption. However, this interpretation raises a number of questions in relation to lineage and biological status, which is a core value in Halacha.
Elizabeth "Lisa" Ann Roberts, otherwise known as Precious Jane Doe, was an American homicide victim found near Everett, Washington on August 14, 1977, who was an unidentified decedent for 43 years until being identified on June 16, 2020. She had been picked up by a male driver while hitchhiking and killed after refusing sex. Her assailant had strangled her with a cord and then emptied his gun into her head, complicating identification. Roberts was a teen runaway who left her Oregon home in July 1977, less than a month before her murder. She was given the nickname "Precious Jane Doe" by Detective Jim Scharf, who began investigating the case in 2008. The detective was quoted as saying, "This young girl was precious to me because her moral decision from her proper upbringing cost her her life [...] I knew she had to be precious to her family too, so I had to find them. We needed to give her name back to her and return her remains to her family." Roberts was 17 at the time of her murder, though initial police estimations of her age were much older. Her body was found by blackberry pickers, and the medical examiner determined she had been dead for approximately 5 days before discovery. She was discovered fully clothed in a pastel tank top and denim cutoffs. As her identity remained unknown, Roberts' case was relegated as a cold case. In 2020, genetic testing via hair samples was used to locate her biological family, who led to her adoptive family.
The Curious Case Of Natalia Grace is a 2023/2024 documentary film series about which examines Natalia Grace, a Ukrainian who was adopted by an American family but abandoned by them two years later.
Good American Family is an upcoming limited drama series by Hulu. Set to stream with eight episodes, the series is inspired by true events of Natalia Grace's life after Kristine and Michael Barnett adopted her believing she was a child with dwarfism but gradually started to reevaluate the situation.
Sandy White Hawk "Cokata Najinn Winyan" is a Native American writer, speaker, and indigenous rights activist.