The Curious Case of Natalia Grace Season 1 (2023)

What can I say except that it's finally time to review the complicated and yet simple case of Natalia Barnett? She is finally speaking out in the second season to this series and I've just reviewed the first season in preparation and figured it was finally time to share my thoughts on it.

Episode 1: Meet the Barnetts

So, this first episode starts out with Michael Barnett's 2019 interview and his fake-ass drama. Let me tell you. I'm so sick of this bitch. Michael Barnett is the most melodramatic SOB I've ever seen - and he's a liar, a legally documented domestic abuser, and without a doubt needs some pretty significant therapy. He takes everything personally and is incredibly cringe to watch in every way. And I'm not even slightly sympathetic towards him if you couldn't already tell. Nor am I sympathetic towards Jacob, the math-genius son who lives in his father's basement, and later on in the series is also revealed to be a liar, and another perpetrator of abuse in the household (though, to be fair, he was a child and was forced by his parents to do disgusting things to his sister's belongings).

With Michael's, Jake's, and a neighbor's description of Natalia's questionable behavior, this seeming puzzle of a mystery is introduced to the viewer in a convoluted way. Natalia's identity and behavior are brought into question, and this documentary does a great job at confronting facts and fiction with other statements that are spoken in faith (or again, maybe falsehood).

The end of this first episode is pretty clear - Natalia begins saying things and doing things that are scaring the Barnett family- she's got knives and poison and pubic hair! Oh my! The idea that Natalia is an adult posing as a child is introduced to the viewer most aggressively, showing a recording of a young Natalia holding a Bible, stating that she's asking God why she wants to do bad things. And guess who most likely put that book in her hands? Kristine Barnett. Shocker.

Episode 2: Orphan and Imposter?

The second episode in this first series looks into a few events that Michael Barnett describes (so, truly, how much can we really believe them?) about Natalia's life.

At this point, Michael claims that Natalia is diagnosed as a Sociopath and that she is clearly lying to the family about her age and past, and Kristine is aggressively grilling the girl about her identity daily. They bring Natalia to a Stress Center, and she is turned away as being a suspected sociopath is undesirable in the mental health community, and they suggest that the Barnetts continue therapy elsewhere. Nice. Great job.

Another instance Michael describes is that she attempted to harm Kristine and pull her into an electric fence. LOL. OK.

They brought her to Larue Carter Mental Hospital in Indiana (now permanently closed with a ringing 2.8 Stars on Google Reviews. Womp Womp.) where Natalia supposedly propositioned all of the male patients and nurses- and then was promptly kicked out for being overtly sexual. She also supposedly openly admitted to wanting to violently harm the Barnetts. The Staff at Larue Carter were very vocal about how mature Natalia was both physically and verbally.

I believe that perhaps this occurred because either the Ciccones or the Barnetts were sexually abusing her an introducing her - A CHILD - to sex. And children repeat what they hear, and will lean into Sexually Harmful behavior if given a chance.

Take a Look at this Graph from the National Center on the Sexual Behavior of Youth

Factors Contributing to Problematic Sexual Behaviors

It's almost like it's not her fault here.

Another great moment in this episode is when the Barnetts are slammed with their first Child-Neglect Charge. Wahoo! Why? Because they made an actual child sleep outside. And she was screaming to be let back in. Yeah. Michael, however, claims that the officer (Clouse) talks to them about getting the court to Re-Age Natalia. Michael also claims that the Detective he worked with somehow found evidence that Natalia had a fraudulent birth certificate on entering the United States and that Natalia didn't recognize herself in the pictures from that point in time. Sure, Jan.

Then, towards the end of the episode we meet the families of Little People that the Ciccones tried to pawn Natalia off on for an extreme amount of money. All of them indicated that she was clearly a child, but that the Ciccones, her first adoptive family in the U.S., were expecting tens of thousands of dollars on the fly for this child.

Oh, and did I mention that it's revealed here that Michael was charged with Domestic Abuse against Kristine? Shocker. And then it's revealed that witnesses in the Electric Fence incident claim that the Little Person involved (Natalia) was not screaming anything about killing Kristine or doing literally anything wrong? Double shocker.

Finally, at the end of this episode, we get to see footage of Natalia's Forensic Interview by the Prosecution Team (her side) in September 2019, right around the time of Michael's ridiculous interview. In this short clip, really what we can absorb is Natalia's side of the Electric Fence incident. According to Natalia, Kristine and her accidentally fell on each other, and then Kristine called the police on Natalia, assuming that she was indeed trying to hurt her.

Episode 3: Nightmare Neighbor

This third episode really looks into the Re-Aging of Natalia in the court system, and then the Barnetts' decision to move her into a poorer neighborhood and dump her into an apartment by herself with little-to-no support for her physical disabilities, and then little to no acknowledgment of the fact that she was, in fact, still a child.

The Re-Aging process involves some kind of medical proof that the individual is physically older than their birth certificate claims, and is, supposedly, very common among adopted children who have fraudulent birth certificates from other countries. She was re-aged from eight to twenty-two. So the judge added fourteen years to her age and then the Barnetts used that as an excuse to claim CPS couldn't claim child-neglect against them.

Moving Natalia to Westfield, Indiana, suddenly now an adult, is the crux of the current legal proceedings being reviewed in this entire series. Was she truly an adult at the time of her being dumped in Westfield, or was she actually an abandoned, neglected, and abused child with disabilities?

Well, before we discuss that, we have to meet all the locals who metthe Re-Aged Natalia in Westfield and what they thought. Really - it was divided. Some of them believed she was a child, and some of them believed she was an adult, but there are a few common denominators that lead me to believe she was a child. Firstly, she was just walking into peoples' homes without permission and grabbing food. Kids just do this. They don't understand the boundaries of territory yet, and even I, as a child, walked into someone's home uninvited. Secondly, she had poor physical hygiene. Children don't understand how to clean themselves properly, and especially won't if their parents neglect them. And compounding that is her physical limitations. Could she reach over her head to take her shirt off to clean herself? Or did she need physical help?

Another thing that irked me about this episode is the constant filming of Natalia doing physical tasks by the Barnetts. Like, they were clearly doing it so they could have evidence that they were around her and that they were, in some ways, proving she could do things on her own as their adult child who was living alone. And then there's the video of Michael grilling Natalia about the APS worker talking to her, and then the verbal admission that they were wiping her phone contacts so that she was then isolated. All of this would make sense if Natalia was truly an adult with aggressive sexual and harmful behavior. But she wasn't. She was a sexually abused and neglected child who was acting out. All of the accounts that Natalia was verbally sexual could be a ramification of sexual abuse or exposure to sexual material by former adoptive parents, other children, or even other adults that she had encountered.

Then we also have Natalia's admission that she attempted to kill Kristine and the Barnetts. Children repeat what they are told, and I'm not shocked at all that a ten-year-old is verbalizing what her parents told her to say about her age and repeating stories that they fabricated so that she would remain isolated.

At the end of the episode, we have a portion of the Deposition of Natalia by Kristine Barnett's Defense Attorney, Mark Nicholson (who, by the way, pulls no punches). And then suddenly we hear that Natalia is removed from the apartment in Westfield, and is not seen or heard from in that community again. Why? The Barnetts moved her into an even worse apartment in Lafayette, Indiana.

Episode 4: Victim or Villain?

The fourth episode started off with me cackling in my bed, after hearing that Michael and Kristine Barnett have been slapped with two charges of child neglect (the charges that lead to the current cases Natalia is fighting). Both of them turn themselves into the Lafayette, Indiana PD, and they are fuming. Too bad, babes. You're the one that dumped a child in an apartment in the hood and expected everything to just go away? Man, criminals are stupid.

So let's talk about this second-floor apartment in Lafayette. You heard me. Second-floor apartment. For a child with physical disabilities. Mhm. And that's not even the worst part. This apartment had ZERO physical accommodations for this child, and the neighbor claims that she was fearful for Natalia's safety not only in the apartment but in the neighborhood around her! Wicked cool job Barnetts.

Anyways, so suddenly nobody knows where Natalia is, and her adult GED center in Lafayette calls Michael and Kristine wondering where she is. And where is she? She turns up having been unofficially taken in by a well-to-do couple in Lafayette; the Mans. And it turns out they attempted to do Legal Guardianship and the courts denied the appeal, according to Cynthia. And apparently, Natalia is VERY happy with them. Michael claims that the Mans took advantage of Natalia's EBT card and used all of it to feed their giant government-mooching family. And yet, Cynthia and Natalia, now legally in her late twenties and physically in her teens, are claiming that Kristine is the one trying to isolate Natalia and keep her from vocalizing the trauma she experienced at the hands of the Barnetts. Too bad the Mans empowered Natalia so that she could speak up and bust the Barnetts for child abuse. Darn.

So Michael turns himself in first, and having now been divorced from Kristine, is bailed out until his trial. This second half of this episode is a sob story from Michael, who claims that he had nothing to do with all of the neglect and abuse and that Kristine was the real villain here. Do I think he's being 100% truthful? No, absolutely not. He's partially culpable, if not directly, than as an accessory to the fact. Also, he's incredibly annoying.

The list of claims that Michael makes in this episode about Kristine are as follows:

• Kristine made Natalia stand on the wall for hours until she urinated and defecated on herself

• Kristine physically beat Natalia beyond recognition

• Kristine would interrogate Natalia aggressively about her identity

• Kristine sexually abused him by withholding sex from him and then sending him unsolicited nude photos

• Erasing cell phones with evidence of the cruelty on them

And then we finally get this GEM out of Jake, who again, I also have no respect for, while he forgets his microphone is off. That SOMEONE kicked SOMEONE down the stairs. It's not actually explained who - but it is implied that someone, likely Kristine, kicked Natalia down the stairs at one point.

Episode 5: Barnett vs. Barnett

The fifth and second-to-last episode in this first season is probably the one that solidified my lack of respect for the Barnetts entirely. Michael is bitching about Kristine the whole episode, and then Jake reveals that Kristine forced him to urinate on Natalia's bed, and Michael explains to him that he won't be held accountable because he was a minor at the time, which is true, but doesn't make me respect Jake any more than I currently do. I think he is a sorry product of abusive parents who didn't amount to anything, nor, to my understanding- is accepting therapy or trying to clear the record or support Natalia at all, and is instead, still lying to protect his father and mother. What a man.

Next, we have a young adult Natalia in her Forensic Interview, who claims at first that the Barnetts would NOT beat her, and then that they DID. Her statements go back and forth, and then she lands on the statement that Kristine told the boys to hurt her, and then that Michael finished her out. The hard thing about victims who are children at the time of abuse is that sometimes the brain will block out trauma, and make it harder to remember correctly, and then other times, depending on the type of abuse the child experiences, explaining the abuse can be difficult because they still feel they are under the control of their abusers to some degree. Do I believe Natalia? Yes. I also believe that she was abused heavily in the Ciccone and the Barnett households and that she was a teenager during her Forensic Interview, which means she is, maybe for the first time, struggling to relive the trauma and verbalize it to a stranger in a strange place, where she may not be fully comfortable.

Then we have the DNA test of Natalia's birth mother. The DNA comes back - it's a match, and the Birth Mother (Anna Gava) claims the baby was born in 2003. Which means she was a child at the time of abandonment.

So the tricky part of this case is that the Legal Teams wound up deciding that any discussion about Natalia's age and any information regarding Kristine has to be thrown out of Michael's portion of the Trial. What does this mean? Several instances of neglect and abuse that were perpetrated against Natalia, Michael claims Kristine committed, which means that most of the incidents that Natalia claims happened to her cannot be brought up during the case against Michael.

Episode 6: Punch or Be Punched

This last episode of the first season is simply about Michael's trial and the aftermath. Long story short, he is acquitted, but it is revealed that Kristine was having conversations with others about Natalia sexually. It is implied that one of two things happened - either Kristine was trying to pimp Natalia out, or Natlia was having sex with Michael. Either way, I wouldn't be shocked, but it seems to upset Michael significantly.

Some believe he was acquitted for good reason, and others believe he was full of BS the entire time and got away with child abuse.

Oh, and then Kristine's trial was dismissed too, because there was insufficient evidence of the claims against her.

My Opinion: A Fuckload of Liars

I'll spoil it for you. She was a child. Like an actual little child left to her own devices in a full apartment by herself. It is highly likely she was physically and sexually abused, but I also don't believe Natalia may be stating the full truth either. At this point, I believe that everyone is lying about the other to get revenge over extremely abusive parenting. Both parents are blaming each other and Natalia, and Natalia is blaming them for being far worse than they may have been. I do believe Natalia was born in 2003 and was a child at the time of her abandonment, but I don't know if the abuse was so bad as is described in this documentary series by Michael. I would like to hear Natalia's side of the story, which has just been released and is my next watch.

Catch you in the next one,

-B