IN - Couple charged with abandonment of adopted child after legally changing her age, Sept 2019

[Linda7NJ]

They’re claiming she lived alone in an apartment for a year (?) with support of a home health aide and a wrap around mental health component before apartment number two, correct?

 

[Dawn Day]

Doesn’t it seem strange to anyone else that an 11 year old child with her initial language barriers, cultural displacement, multiple placement disruptions, The Barnett's FAILURE to provide education as they're charged...somehow she tested into an ADULT EDUCATION CLASS & fooled everyone there?

According to LARA, if the student does not do well enough on the placement test, they are given a tutor to work with to increase their readiness. We don’t know if she was actually in the adult classes or was working with a tutor at the school

 

[Linda7NJ]

I’d love to know Natalia’s IQ

 

[cherrymeg]

According to LARA, if the student does not do well enough on the placement test, they are given a tutor to work with to increase their readiness. We don’t know if she was actually in the adult classes or was working with a tutor at the school

Was she in classes that helped learning disabled adults? They could have asked for her to be 18 and they chose 22, when you can't go to a public high school anymore. Teachers used to seeing adolescents might pick up on the fact that she was very young.

 

[Amonet]

Doesn’t it seem strange to anyone else that an 11 year old child with her initial language barriers, cultural displacement, multiple placement disruptions, The Barnett's FAILURE to provide education as they're charged...somehow she tested into an ADULT EDUCATION CLASS & fooled everyone there?

I don't feel that I know yet if that is a fair description of what happened.

One of the news reports I saw said that the school only accepted over 16s, but those who didn't have their GED could be put into catch-up classes if they weren't yet ready for the actual GED study. I don't know which class she tested into.

The Barnetts say that N had 'mature' language skills for her age, which I don't think is necessarily out of the question for a child with that background if they're immersed into a situation with no other language than English and a strong desire to learn it in order to fit in and communicate. N was also in a family that had a son who was testing way higher than his age in some subjects. Maybe some of that rubbed off onto N?

 

[Linda7NJ]

A lawyer who represented Natalia in 2013 told the Journal and Courier, “I do not believe her to be an adult at the time I represented her.” Another lawyer, who represented a family who tried to obtain guardianship of Natalia, told the outlet, “The most egregious part of it is that this child was turned into an adult without any representation … This kid’s sitting out there, and her parents say, ‘Well, we’re going to turn you into an adult.’ Which is what I find incredibly offensive.”



So which is it? Did Natalia have representation or not?

“Natalia was then placed in a psychiatric unit at a hospital. During treatment, a therapist says she allegedly revealed she was 18, and the Barnett’s family doctor wrote a letter saying that he supported the idea that Natalia “had made a career out of pretending to be a young child.”

Fooled the folks at the psychiatric hospital ward

“Natalia is now living with another Indiana couple, Antwon and Cynthia Mans, and their five children. They are the same couple who applied to be Natalia’s guardians in 2016, filing documents that referred to Natalia as “approximately 13 or 14 years of age, born September 4 (year uncertain) … who is unable to maintain and care for her financial affairs and person as she is actually a minor abandoned by her adoptive parents”

So the Mann’s find a child abandoned by her parents living alone in an apartment and what did they do? WHEN EXACTLY?
Did the call the police? Child Protective Services?

 

[Linda7NJ]

Surely Natalia was psychologically tested & evaluated. The Barnett’s seem very confident those records are critically important to the their defense.

More experts fooled by a crafty 11 year old?

The Barnett’s also want the school records - I’ll assume she aced the testing

 

[Amonet]

I thought N had a guardian ad litem for one of the hearings.

I would think the 2016 hearing N was the one who technically had the attorney as the case was for her to have her age reduced from that given to her in the first case.


Did N fool the people at the psych place, or did the Barnetts and their helpful doctor fool the people at the psych place?

Did N fool the Barnetts, or did they convince themselves without N's help?

Did the Barnetts, having made up their minds, then 'tell' N what to say when she was asked her age? Did N just play along with that as that's what she'd been told to do by her 'parents'?

 

[cherrymeg]

A lawyer who represented Natalia in 2013 told the Journal and Courier, “I do not believe her to be an adult at the time I represented her.” Another lawyer, who represented a family who tried to obtain guardianship of Natalia, told the outlet, “The most egregious part of it is that this child was turned into an adult without any representation … This kid’s sitting out there, and her parents say, ‘Well, we’re going to turn you into an adult.’ Which is what I find incredibly offensive.”



So which is it? Did Natalia have representation or not?

“Natalia was then placed in a psychiatric unit at a hospital. During treatment, a therapist says she allegedly revealed she was 18, and the Barnett’s family doctor wrote a letter saying that he supported the idea that Natalia “had made a career out of pretending to be a young child.”

Fooled the folks at the psychiatric hospital ward

“Natalia is now living with another Indiana couple, Antwon and Cynthia Mans, and their five children. They are the same couple who applied to be Natalia’s guardians in 2016, filing documents that referred to Natalia as “approximately 13 or 14 years of age, born September 4 (year uncertain) … who is unable to maintain and care for her financial affairs and person as she is actually a minor abandoned by her adoptive parents”

So the Mann’s find a child abandoned by her parents living alone in an apartment and what did they do? WHEN EXACTLY?
Did the call the police? Child Protective Services?

If she is legally 22 what can they report. I believe they tried to change her age or get custody of her as a child. As an adult I think someone else explained this better but it could have affected her future if they had conservatorship or were legal guardians of her if the state insisted she was an adult. Are you sure she wasn't represented by a lawyer when the Mans tried to get custody of her as a child? A child should be enrolled in school. Years of her life were taken from her.

 

[Linda7NJ]

Found it- Natalia was represented

Details of the ensuing April 2016 proceedings are not publicly available and Natalia's guardian ad litem Ladona E. Sorenson, an independent family attorney appointed by the court to protect her best interests, said she was unable to comment.

 

[squareandrabbet]

Well, that's pretty interesting, because this news story says the below (BBM):

A lawyer for the Ukrainian orphan accused of being an adult posing as a child says her ex-mom is wrong about her age

Attorney Ladona Sorenson represented Natalia in 2013, a year after Michael and Kristine Barnett changed the girl's age in her birth records from 8 to 22, according to court records seen by the Lafayette Journal and Courier.

"I do not believe her to be an adult at the time I represented her," Sorenson told the Journal and Courier.

Thus, there is no conflict as to whether or not Natalia had legal representation at the time of her age change. She did not; as far as we know. She didn't acquire a lawyer until approximately 12 months after the Barnetts changed her name. I'm taking Insider's word on the contents of the Lafayette Courier and Journal findings, as I hate USA Today-umbrella'ed papers insisting that I turn off my advertisement blocker in order to look at them, and refuse to do it.

 

[Linda7NJ]

If she is legally 22 what can they report. I believe they tried to change her age or get custody of her as a child. As an adult I think someone else explained this better but it could have affected her future if they had conservatorship or were legal guardians of her if the state insisted she was an adult. Are you sure she wasn't represented by a lawyer when the Mans tried to get custody of her as a child? A child should be enrolled in school. Years of her life were taken from her.

I’m NOT sure of ANYTHING in the case!
lol

 

[Amonet]

Surely Natalia was psychologically tested & evaluated. The Barnett’s seem very confident those records are critically important to the their defense.

More experts fooled by a crafty 11 year old?

The Barnett’s also want the school records - I’ll assume she aced the testing

We haven't seen the actual evaluations, so I think it's hard for us to know what was asked and what was concluded in the psych evaluations.

If the psych staff were told, here's someone of indeterminate age but good reason to consider she's over 18...that doesn't mean they're going to expect to find an 18 yr old mind inside that 18 yr old body. People of 18 can have a mental age of 11 .... were the psych staff tasked to find out which it really was? Or were they only tasked with diagnosing and helping N as a patient who was brought to them, which is what would normally be the case?

I haven't seen anything yet in the limited medical information that's leaked out that 'proves' to me beyond doubt that the age on the birth certificate was either incorrect or more than one or two years out. So it doesn't seem logical to me to assume that 1) the age was wrong, and 2)knowing that her age was wrong, she managed to pull off a massive con on the adoption agency, the Barnetts, on the doctors who did the bone scans, on the psych staff, and so on.

What about the teeth being 'adult' and yet still losing deciduous teeth at the legal age of 23 or 24?

If I ignore everything from the Barnetts that might be biased and not verified by a 3rd party, then what am I left with? For me, I can't see anything that conclusively says the child wasn't a child.

I am willing to change my mind if medical evidence comes out that is a proper medical report, and I would give that evidence greater importance than anything else as there's less chance of outside manipulation or bias in actual scans -- though it is still possible to have bias in interpretation, but with numerous experts checking each other on those, then it should be possible imho to get closer to a realistic age range for the individual.

There are experts out there who work in 'aging' individuals from ancient civilizations...they don't use psych reports or stories from the family, they just go on what they know of biological aging. So I see the rest of it as unimportant faff and not compelling at all.

 

[Linda7NJ]

Well, that's pretty interesting, because this news story says the below (BBM):

A lawyer for the Ukrainian orphan accused of being an adult posing as a child says her ex-mom is wrong about her age



Thus, there is no conflict as to whether or not Natalia had legal representation at the time of her age change. She did not; as far as we know. She didn't acquire a lawyer until approximately 12 months after the Barnetts changed her name. I'm taking Insider's word on the contents of the Lafayette Courier and Journal findings, as I hate USA Today-umbrella'ed papers insisting that I turn off my advertisement blocker in order to look at them, and refuse to do it.

 

[Meloni88]

Doesn’t it seem strange to anyone else that an 11 year old child with her initial language barriers, cultural displacement, multiple placement disruptions, The Barnett's FAILURE to provide education as they're charged...somehow she tested into an ADULT EDUCATION CLASS & fooled everyone there?

I actually don't think it's that strange that a bright 11 year old could keep up with some GED candidates/high school drop outs. This wasn't Yale. But we don't really know what her performance was beyond the bare minimum requirements. Maybe she was just scraping by. I think you might be making a few assumptions about other people's thoughts saying that she fooled everyone. It was my understanding that someone working at the school reported the situation to the authorities because they believed she was a kid and she had various documents with differing birth dates on them. I think we've only heard from one of her peers who I seem to remember was a much older lady so not someone who can necessarily judge if another person is a fellow teen/young adult, since she wasn't one herself.

I exclusively spoke Welsh until I was 6 and then attended an English medium school. I still excelled at English and you would not have been able to tell it was my second language, I speak English with an English accent not a Welsh one. My grasp of English was on par with all my English classmates in no time at all and I'm pretty sure my language and grammar knowledge would have been better at 11-12 than someone who failed high school.

 

[Linda7NJ]

from the previous posted article ....”A year after changing their adoptive daughter's birth records, the Barnetts, who were living in Hamilton County at the time, rented an apartment for the girl on North 11th Street in Lafayette and moved her here.”

So....this does corroborate (somewhat) that the year after her age change Natalia had been spent living alone successfully with minimal support before moving into the last apartment.

If what the Barnett’s said about this is true, I cannot believe a then 10 year old could successfully live alone with minimal support for a year

 

[Meloni88]

A lawyer who represented Natalia in 2013 told the Journal and Courier, “I do not believe her to be an adult at the time I represented her.” Another lawyer, who represented a family who tried to obtain guardianship of Natalia, told the outlet, “The most egregious part of it is that this child was turned into an adult without any representation … This kid’s sitting out there, and her parents say, ‘Well, we’re going to turn you into an adult.’ Which is what I find incredibly offensive.”



So which is it? Did Natalia have representation or not?

She didn't have any for the initial age change decision. She, or the Mans, had representation at the guardianship hearing though. But that ended up being dismissed without prejudice. I think it's disingenuous for anyone to say the judge "upheld" or "confirmed" the previous ruling on her age. The judge just didn't overturn the previous decision and then the case was dropped by the Mans

 

[Linda7NJ]

She didn't have any for the initial age change decision. She, or the Mans, had representation at the guardianship hearing though. But that ended up being dismissed without prejudice. I think it's disingenuous for anyone to say the judge "upheld" or "confirmed" the previous ruling on her age. The judge just didn't overturn the previous decision and then the case was dropped by the Mans

The article says more evidence was presented at that hearing IIRC

 

[squareandrabbet]

Also, as per MSN, this is a timeline if it will help (source is below):

EXCLUSIVE: Ukrainian dwarf adopted by American couple who claim she was 'an adult sociopath masquerading as a child' is now living in Indiana with a new devout Christian family of five who believe she was abandoned by them

Kristine and Michael Barnett, 43, were experienced foster parents themselves when they decided to adopt Natalia in April 2010, believing she had been in the US two years and was six years old.

-Bone density tests performed @ Payton Manning in (1) 2010; (2), 2012; which stated respective ages (1) "approximately" 8 and (2), 11:

The affidavit also refers to a 2014 interview with Natalia who told a detective that her parents left her alone at the Lafayette apartment and she never saw them again.

Bishop Mans and his wife appear to have come into Natalia's life sometime between 2013 and early 2016 when they lodged their application to become her legal guardians, describing themselves as her 'caretakers'.

Details of the ensuing April 2016 proceedings are not publicly available and Natalia's guardian ad litem Ladona E. Sorenson, an independent family attorney appointed by the court to protect her best interests, said she was unable to comment.

The Manses' attorney, Michael B. Troemel, did not return calls but Terrance Kinnard, who represented Michael Barnett, said the application was turned down.

It also won't help if we're getting articles like these because journalists are all relying upon "the other guy's" articles to write their own, instead of looking at the court documents we have. I'm not entirely convinced, for example, that some of these reporters are accurately labeling Ms. Sorenson, or even if these reporters know the difference between a "guardian ad litem" or an "attorney ad litem"; or know that it's possible to have an attorney be appointed "guardian ad litem" and in fact never function as an attorney on said case. They may in fact be functioning solely as a guardian though they are coincidentally also an attorney; and to make matters worse, I think it even depends upon jurisdiction. @gitana1 ?

 

[Linda7NJ]

Also, as per MSN, this is a timeline if it will help (source is below):

EXCLUSIVE: Ukrainian dwarf adopted by American couple who claim she was 'an adult sociopath masquerading as a child' is now living in Indiana with a new devout Christian family of five who believe she was abandoned by them



-Bone density tests performed @ Payton Manning in (1) 2010; (2), 2012; which stated respective ages (1) "approximately" 8 and (2), 11:







It also won't help if we're getting articles like these because journalists are all relying upon "the other guy's" articles to write their own, instead of looking at the court documents we have. I'm not entirely convinced, for example, that some of these reporters are accurately labeling Ms. Sorenson, or even if these reporters know the difference between a "guardian ad litem" or an "attorney ad litem"; or know that it's possible to have an attorney be appointed "guardian ad litem" and in fact never function as an attorney on said case. They may in fact be functioning solely as a guardian though they are coincidentally also an attorney; and to make matters worse, I think it even depends upon jurisdiction. @gitana1 ?

true, true, true, true.