Natalia Grace confronts her mother’s abuse allegations and adoptive father who tried to have a relationship with an adult man

Grace first made headlines when her adoptive family changed her birth date to make her much older, then took her into their own apartment. Her parents, Michael and Christine Barnett, did not believe that Natalia was actually a child, but rather believed that a woman in her 20s was trying to murder them and their children, but was later found abandoned. He was arrested, but was acquitted.

Grace meets Michael outside court for the first time in the new ID documentary series, The Strange Case of Natalia Grace, and asks him about his wife’s alleged abuse and why he didn’t do more. Will she help her or break up with Christine?

“I want to know why you adopted me in the first place. Why?!” Natalia asked first, and Michael said, “For many of these questions, there will not be a single answer.” . He further told Christine that they were both “incredible victims of an out-of-this-world kind of abuse” and that they both shared “the same monster” in Christine.

When she asked why he felt like a “victim” too, he told her there was “a lot you don’t know” and that he felt “inordinately controlled, oppressed, threatened and belittled.” “I was,” he claimed. She was instructed to be exactly what she wanted me to be,” Christine said. Her boyfriend claimed that she threatened to take away her sons if she did not comply and that he tried to leave her at least 10 times.

Michael then asked why they got married in the first place, to which he replied, “That’s a hell of a question.” At that point, Natalia’s other adoptive father, Bishop, intervened and asked Natalia not to swear, and an argument began between Natalia and Michael’s lawyer. So Michael threw a fit and screamed, “I tried to get rid of that mouth,” before running out of the house, screaming violently and shouting, “No, no, no, no, no!”

“If there was a God, God would let me die! God would let me die,” he cried, before getting into his car and driving away.

It was all very strange, but Michael contacted Natalia again and asked her to sit down and talk again. She agreed and asked why he didn’t leave Christine in the first place.

“Having been oppressed, degraded, dominated and threatened for over 15 years, I had no strength to stand up to her. I wish I had, but I didn’t,” he said. , added that it wasn’t for him. She even stops calling Christine by her name, instead calling her “Evil” or “The Wicked Witch of the South.”

When Natalia asked Michael if he knew what Kristin allegedly did to him, Michael said he knew “some things” and was “just learning” about other allegations. “I’m afraid of what I don’t know,” he said, adding that he couldn’t understand it very deeply. detail. His lawyer defended his general answer, saying his client was not “running away” but “suffering from PTSD as a result of this marriage.”

He also said there was “not a lot of conversation” about dropping her off at her apartment when she was still a child, saying it was because “there was a lot of dictation.” Michael also refused to answer questions about Natalya’s age change, yelling at the producers that Natalya agreed to be off limits before sitting down after she asked about it. “I just don’t want to get too emotional, that’s all,” he added, after bumbling that the question was even asked.

Michael was also asked why he didn’t put Natalia back into the family, even though he knew things weren’t working out. He claimed to have had such a conversation with Christine and suggested he “walk away from this,” but was met with a “very, very, very, very hard no.” Theorizing why her wife allegedly didn’t want to let Natalia go, she thinks she was hoping for the adoration and attention that comes with adopting someone with special needs. said.

“It’s vaguely possible that she saw adoption in the sense of, ‘Guys, aren’t I a wonderful person? Look at me, I’m so wonderful and so charitable.'” He spoke, choosing his words carefully. “She regularly compared herself to Oprah,” she added, adding that she may not have wanted to tell anyone why the adoption didn’t work out. Ta.

“Do you remember locking my door?” Natalia asked, as Michael said his doctor told him to do so.

She wanted to know if he had “realized that Kristin was hitting me with a belt” and “let the boys hit me” and allowed his son Jacob at the time to “drop me” . Michael stubbornly insists he didn’t do it, and after his son sheds tears and says he’s “so sorry” for what his mother “made him do,” Natalia says in a confessional that Michael didn’t do it. He praised her, saying how “cute” she was. Even though she felt he blamed everything on Christine, she still felt he was at least partially responsible for what she allegedly went through. Ta.

“What did you think when Christine was hitting me?” she then asked when Michael reiterated how Christine allegedly used her sons as a threat. He said that at one point he tried to record some of the alleged abuse in the hopes that she would see it and stop, but Kristin reset her phone. He also claimed that he forced her to delete all of its contents.

Natalia went on to share details of the alleged abuse with Michael, saying that Kristin made her wear a pink dress and pointy hat, made her “stand like a gnome” in her front garden, kept her alone in her apartment, and “made sexual advances towards her”. He claimed to have been exposed to “. At such a young age. She also claims that Kristin put on makeup and cut her hair in an attempt to “make me look more mature” and that her adoptive mother “took a picture of me all done up before sending it to a man and gave me the right to claim my rights.” I tried to get it back,” he added. We went on a date. ”

“When I was seven years old, Christine tried to put me in a relationship with a man. With a grown man. What if that man raped me? He could have done anything, kidnapped me. He could have killed me.” Michael learned of the allegation “three or four weeks ago” and likely aired it as part of another Natalia Grace special earlier this year. she added.

TooFab has only seen five of the six episodes of the docuseries, but Natalia and Michael’s conversation continues in part six.

The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks will premiere on Monday, January 1st for three consecutive nights on ID, airing nightly from 9pm to 11pm ET/PT. See below for more details.