Over the past few years, the highly controversial story of Natalia Grace has been breathlessly covered by daytime talk shows, podcasts and docu-series.

Natalia Grace is a Ukrainian woman who was adopted into a US family as a child, leading to a bizarre series of events that resulted in neglect charges for her adoptive parents, Kristine and Michael Barnett.

As a child with disability, Natalia has testified that she was forced to fend for herself after her adoptive parents abandoned her in an inaccessible apartment to live alone. 

The new Disney+ miniseries, Good American Family, offers a dramatised version of events.

However, the stars of the show have admitted that the stranger-than-fiction tale has been altered to serve the appetites of true-crime fans.

Here’s the real-life story behind Good American Family.

“Kristine coached me to lie about my age and say I tried to murder my parents,” Natalia told People of her adoptive mother. (Supplied: Warner Bros)

Who is Natalia Grace?

Born with diastrophic dysplasia, a type of dwarfism, Natalia Grace was first adopted from Ukraine by a New Hampshire couple in 2008 and brought to the US. By 2010, the couple had put Natalia back up for adoption. She was then adopted by the Barnetts and taken to Hamilton County, Indiana to live, according to court records.

When she came to live with the Barnetts, Natalia’s birth certificate stated she was born in 2003 but her adoptive parents claim certain behaviours and physicalities soon made them doubt her age.

The Barnetts also argue that Natalia began to demonstrate threatening behaviour towards them and their three biological sons.

Over the next two years, the Barnetts had Natalia psychologically and physically examined by various health services.

A young Natalia Grace with Kristine while she was living in the Barnett household. (Supplied: Warner Bros)

This led to the husband and wife petitioning an Indiana court to legally change Natalia’s birth year from 2003 to 1989, based on the assessments of a primary care physician and a social worker.

Eleven days later, without any evidentiary hearing and without supplying Natalia a guardian representative, the court granted the Barnetts’ request. Natalia was not present during the proceedings and was informed of the change while hospitalised at a nearby facility.

Following the change in Natalia’s birth year, her adoptive parents moved her into her own apartment and helped her obtain disability payments.

Shortly after, local child safety authorities received a report that Natalia was an abandoned child. An investigation was opened and ultimately discarded due to the legal change in Natalia’s birth year.

The Barnetts moved Natalia into a different apartment, paying for one year’s rent but did not provide additional financial support, before moving to Canada with their biological children.

This would be one of the last times Natalia saw the Barnetts.

What happened next?

Shortly after the Barnetts moved to Canada, Natalia befriended couple Antwon and Cynthia Mans and soon moved in with them.

Between 2014 and 2017, the Mans attempted to rectify Natalia’s situation by applying for guardianship.

Michael filed an objection to this request citing Natalia’s age-change order, with the court suggesting the Mans reverse the order before attempting to apply for guardianship again.

Natalia Grace with Antwon and Cynthia Mans during the filming of the second season of Investigation Discovery’s The Curious Case of Natalia Grace. (Supplied: Warner Bros)

Then, for two-and-a-half years, things went relatively quiet. Until September 2019, when Kristine and Micheal Barnett were both charged with neglect, in separate cases, over their treatment of Natalia.

Less than two weeks after the charges went public, the Barnetts — who had, by then, divorced — went on a media blitz.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Kristine claimed that she became suspicious of Natalia’s age after she saw the girl had “full pubic hair”. She also assumed that Natalia had already started menstruating.

Kristine claimed that Natalia was violent and had tried to hurt her sons and herself, including trying to push her into an electric fence and standing over her with knives.

Michael repeated claims that Natalia was violent towards the family, including placing thumb tacks around the house for them to step on, in an October 2019 interview with Good Morning America.

He also appeared twice on The Dr. Oz Show and once on Inside Edition, as well as on news outlets in the Indianapolis television market.

Due to the overwhelming media attention, a local judge issued a gag order on Kristine and Michael Barnett on October 28, 2019.

A month later, Natalia conducted a TV interview with Dr Phil where she denied all claims that she tried to harm the Barnetts or their sons.

Where does Orphan fit into it all?

Orphan is a 2009 horror film that centres on a nine-year-old Russian orphan, Esther, who is adopted into an American family. After Esther starts murdering the people around her, it’s revealed that she’s actually a 33-year-old woman, using her short stature to pose as a child.

In Kristine Barnett’s original interview with the Daily Mail, the film is heavily referenced in relation to Natalia’s story.

In the second season of docu-series The Curious Case Of Natalia Grace, Natalia claims that the film is what inspired her adoptive parents’ crusade against her.

“The things that Kristine and Michael have said that I’ve done is a lie. It was all copied off the movie Orphan,” Natalia says in the series.

“Ukrainian girl, Russian girl, check. Orphan, check. All this crazy stuff. Standing at the end of the bed with a knife, check.”

Were Kristine and Michael Barnett convicted of neglect?

No.

Michael Barnett was acquitted of neglect charges by an Indiana jury in late 2022.

During the trial, prosecutors argued that the Barnetts abandoned Natalia in a second-floor apartment where she was unable to navigate the stairs and was without a walker or wheelchair or any knowledge of the city.

Kristin and Michael Barnett were arrested and charged with neglect but were never convicted. (Supplied: Warner Bros)

She testified that she learned nearly everything about life, including how to read, write and wash her hair from the Mans.

However, the defence successfully argued that Natalia “wanted nothing to do with the Barnetts. She had moved on.“

Three weeks before Kristine Barnett’s trial was set to start, her charges were dismissed, with the County Prosecutor citing “insufficient evidence”.

Where is Natalia Grace now?

In 2023, following medical tests and DNA analysis, Natalia’s birth year was restored to 2003.

She conducted an interview with People magazine in January 2025 where she shared that she “escaped” the Mans home in 2023 after they became controlling and restrictive of who she could talk to.

She now lives with friends, married couple Nicole and Vincent DePaul, who also have dwarfism, and their family, and is currently studying for her high school diploma.

“It’s a blessing to be alive today because, looking back … I should have been dead,” she says.

Is Good American Family a true story?

Like many recent “based on a true story” miniseries, viewers should take the events presented in Good American Family with a grain of salt.

The series is “inspired” by Natalia’s story but told from multiple perspectives in order to “explore issues of perspective, bias, and trauma” according to promotional material.

But the series’ star has confirmed it’s not a completely factual retelling of the strange and sad saga.

“We’re coming up with our own version of what this story could have been, so this isn’t sort of a beat-for-beat of what their experience was,” Ellen Pompeo, who plays Kristine Barnett, told Variety.

“It’s really what we do here, I guess, in Hollywood. We make entertainment that hopefully provokes thought, and we take a set of circumstances and put our spin on it.”

Good American Family is streaming on Disney+ now.