The Mystery of Bad Raising

 　　Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor of the movie "Titanic", has brought "alternative" gospel to fans in his radiant acting career - he has done the classic thriller "Titanic". Producer of Orphans. The film tells the story of a family of four whose mother wants to heal her miscarriage and free herself from alcoholism, so she adopts a 9-year-old Estonian girl. Unexpectedly, this act of kindness led to the destruction of the whole family. The adopted girl, Esther, looks extremely well-behaved and behaves extremely dignified, but her real face is an adult mentally ill dwarf who is over 30 years old. A terrifying trap, intending to occupy the magpie's nest from now on.

　　This horror film breaks the core elements of horror that used "bad seeds" as a fuss in previous similar films, and creates an alternative nightmare for adoptive families through age fraud. The fresh "thriller point", coupled with the shocking acting skills of the 10-year-old girl Isabel Foreman who played the role of an adult dwarf, made the low-cost "Orphan Resentment" highly recognized among heavy-duty movie fans.

　　What's interesting is that today, several years later, when referring to this "Orphan Resentment", there will still be many people who will tell you seriously: "This is based on real events." In fact, this is a strange misunderstanding , the source of the misunderstanding comes from an adoption koan that happened in reality.

"Evil Raised" House

　　The North American release date of "The Orphan" is July 24, 2009, and the earliest the beginning of the case can only be traced back to 2010, because that year for the Barnetts living in Indiana (Barnetts) , is a year that transforms family fortunes. As in the movie, this is a seemingly very happy family of five, and the Barnetts and their three sons can live smoothly without adding family members. But the hostess Christine Barnett has always longed for the "big family", to be precise, wanted another girl, but unfortunately she suffered from pregnancy complications at that time, and the doctor announced that she could no longer bear children on her own. So the couple resolutely contacted the adoption agency and expressed their firm will to add a girl to the family.

　　In May of that year, the Barnetts received a call from the Florida Adoption Center, informing them that they had a girl who was looking for an adoptive family, but that she needed to be fully prepared because the 7-year-old girl from Ukraine was born with a child. Spondylo-epiphyseal dysplasia, will never grow taller in this life, and will still be a dwarf even as an adult. According to the rules of the adoption agency, couples who intend to adopt are generally only given 24 hours to consider, and if no response is received after a day, the agency will find other families for the girl.

　　The Barnetts agreed without hesitation, and immediately flew to Florida to take Ukrainian girl Natalia Grace back to their home. Like Isabelle Foreman, who played the terrifying adopted daughter in the movie, this Natalia has chestnut hair, dark brown eyes, and a sweet angelic face. At the same time, they also found that the little angels have inconvenient legs and feet and need to rely on assistive devices to move.

　　For Kristin, however, none of the "problems" with Natalia were a problem. Her eldest son Jacob is also a so-called "problem child". He suffers from severe autism, but at the same time, he has demonstrated his amazing talent in physics. He is also well-known in the industry. The TV station has also interviewed him. Kristen is also seen as a model of successful motherhood and has written THE SPARK, a parenting book on how to raise Jacob. Kristin is running a children's day care center with a partner, and taking care of children is her forte.

　　On the surface, the Barnetts are finally consummated. They treat Natalia as if they were gone, the whole family barbecues together, and travels together... Everything looks so good, but it's a pity that this kind of beauty has been maintained for less than a year. collapse. Just a few months into the new life, the new member gradually left the family - Natalia left the house every three days, and the Barnetts slowly stopped mentioning this daughter. In July 2012, a family of five immigrated to Canada in 2013 because the eldest son Jacob was exceptionally admitted to a Canadian Institute of Physics Theory - yes, it was "a family of five", and they brought Natalia. Stayed in a rented apartment in Lafayette, Indiana.

　　In other words, Natalia, who was only 9 years old since then, has lived a single life and took care of herself completely. According to her own later, she can only eat canned food non-stop this year. A year later, in 2014, Natalia had to move out of the apartment because the rent was due. That year, the Barnetts divorced, and they didn't seem to want to continue to accept their adopted daughter. Natalia could only obey the arrangement of her adoptive parents and moved to another residence. During this period, it was her neighbor who always took care of her— - Pastor Antwan and his wife, this kind couple has raised 5 children, they don't mind taking in one more, so they took care of Natalia like this for 2 years. During this period, the couple decided to "take over" the abandoned Natalia and formally applied to become their legal guardian in March 2016, but this application was rejected.

　　In Natalia's file, her date of birth is written "September 4, 1989", which means that she is already a 26-year-old adult, and adults cannot adopt adults. The Antwans couldn't believe that the girl who was less than 1 meter tall had already been judicially modified by the Barnetts. This means that even if the adoptive parents who brought Natalia home from the adoption agency completely cut ties with her, it seems to be legally compliant.

　　In order to save Natalia from this "bad family" and become her legal guardian, the Antwans found her original adoptive parents, hoping that the two could go through the procedure to change back to Natalia's date of birth. reject. As a result, prosecutors in Indiana put the Barnetts on trial for "abandonment charges."

"Wicked Girl" Resentment

　　In September 2019, the divorced Michael Barnett and Christine returned to the United States. After carrying the notoriety of "abandonment", they told a terrifying "truth" that was completely different from the open lawsuit. The details can be It is said to be a remake of "The Orphan's Resentment". According to the two of them in an interview with the "Daily Mail", the moment they brought Natalia back from the adoption center, doubts arose. First, Christine took Natalia into the bathroom to take a shower, and when she undressed her, she found that the 7-year-old girl had grown thick body hair. Second, Natalia does not seem to speak her native Ukrainian at all, and speaks English with no accent at all. What's even more outrageous is that Christine discovered that the child had a period.

　　The couple were rightly suspicious of Natalia's age, so they gave her about four bone-age tests before and after. At first they had their family doctor take a test, and the bone age was determined to be at least 14 years old. So in June 2010 and 2012, the Barnetts took her to a children's hospital for a bone age test, which found that her bone age was about 11 years old. However, Michael Barnett's attending physician believed that the results measured by the children's hospital were inaccurate, and Natalia's congenital disease also made the test more difficult. He mentioned Natalie in a letter. Before entering the Barnett family, Ya was adopted by at least 2 families in different regions, and she was obviously not born in 2003, but just pretended to be a child during her adoption.

　　In fact, the worst thing is not the question of age, but the abnormal state of Natalia in the Barnett family. Christine recounted Natalia's outrageous behavior to the public, such as she would spill bleach into Christine's coffee, and bluntly said she would poison her when she was found. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to find Christine standing by the head of the bed with sharps in hand. Another time, Natalia tried to push Kristen against the electrified fence, she even smeared blood on the mirror, hurt the child in the daycare center, jumped out of a moving car... By the way, This Natalia also draws particularly terrifying murder paintings, which coincides with the plot of the movie.

　　These details that can only be seen in horror movies-even some of them are highly similar to the plot in the movie "The Orphan's Resentment", from the mouths of the two adopters, it seems that reality imitates the script. For this reason, Barnett had to take Natalia for psychological counseling, and the answer given by the psychological counselor was also clear-Natalia was mentally ill and was also a typical anti-social personality.

　　In this way, the Barnetts, who were not yet divorced at the time, finally had a sense of fear for the orphan they led in. They put away all the sharp objects in the house and frequently sent Natalia to a mental hospital for treatment. Why Natalia is often away from home for a while. In 2012, the Barnetts turned over bone age tests from their family physicians to the Marion County probate court, and a judge approved a drastic revision of their birth dates.

　　Obviously, changing the age on the legal document is the first step for the couple to get rid of Natalia, because only by proving that she is an adult, will she not be suspected of "abandonment". The second step is to handle her affairs like an adult, such as applying for her social security number, benefits, ID, and repeatedly telling her to say she is 23 when asked about her age at school.

　　They then prepaid a year's rent, left a pile of cans and food stamps in the apartment, and flew away with their three sons in what looked like a planned escape. In order to keep things from getting out of hand, the immigrant Christine called Natalia almost every day to inquire about the situation, but such "efforts" could not get her and her ex-husband out of this doomed lawsuit. Because in the first year the Bennets immigrated, local law enforcement had noticed that Natalia was left alone at home.

Doubts about "Rashomon"

　　Since 2013, the case investigation and multi-party evidence collection have been carried out. After several years, the Indiana prosecutor finally sent a court summons to the divorced Barnett and his wife. The pair were charged with six counts of neglecting a dependant and two counts of conspiracy to neglect a dependant. The first six counts were dismissed in 2019 and only conspiracy was confirmed. On September 19 of the same year, Michael and Christine were released after paying more than $5,000 in bail.

　　Just as Kristin and Michael face prosecutors' appeal to the Supreme Court, the number of "passers-by" in this case is increasing day by day. Because the process of the case is too similar to "The Orphan's Resentment", Natalia's photos have also been published in major media, and the highly dramatic details once made the whole people into the "solving the case" upsurge.

　　In the face of rumors and accusations from adoptive parents, the pastor and his wife, who have been determined to adopt Natalia, took her to the popular program "The Dr. Phil Show" for an interview. On the show, Natalia insisted that she was only 16 years old, and she tearfully said that there was no truth to her body hair and periods during her stay at the Barnett's house. At the same time, she also denied that she wanted to assassinate Christine - her small size and limited mobility make it impossible to push a tall adult onto the grid. As for standing beside the couple's bed at night, it was because she was young and scared to get up in the middle of the night, and wanted to squeeze into her adoptive parents' bed to sleep together.

　　At the same time, the pastor and his wife also testified that in the years they cared for Natalia, they never found out that she had a period or any psychotic symptoms, and that she had established a good relationship with their five children. relation. As for the revision of the date of birth, the prosecutor believes that the court did not appoint a guardian to represent Natalia to participate in the ruling at that time, which means that the Barnetts and Natalia were not present when the ruling was made, so the revision should be sentenced. invalid. Natalia's musculature and skeletal stunting also made bone age tests extremely inaccurate, not enough to prove she was fraudulent about her age.

Poster for the movie sequel, Orphans: The First Kill.

Natalia Grace when adopted.

Natalia Grace in an interview on The Dr. Phil Show.

The Barnetts and their three sons.

　　After this interview was broadcast, two distinct groups of "mass opinions" were formed. One group believed that from the bone age test, the psychiatric identification report, and even Natalia's mature performance on TV programs, it can be seen that she should have more than 30 years of experience. old and a liar. The other side believes that Natalia's teeth are clearly those of a toddler, as seen in photos from when Natalia was originally adopted by the Barnett family, and when she was on TV, her teeth were clearly adults. Therefore, unless the adopted daughter is quietly put on dentures, as the movie is set, there is no way that the teeth have changed so obviously, which fully shows that Natalia was adopted by the Barnetts as a child. It is worth mentioning that Natalia was adopted by a dwarf couple before Barnett, and their reasons for abandoning the adoption have not been released.

　　Until August 2020, the prosecutor's appeal was dismissed by the High Court on the grounds that they were inapplicable because Natalia's actual age had been determined by the certification court and the statute of limitations had expired before the charges were brought, Therefore, the two cannot be convicted on the charge of "abandonment". In other words, from a legal point of view, Natalia was indeed an adult when she was left by the Barnett family.

　　The mystery of Natalia's age has not been solved so far. Many people accuse the "bad girl" who is suspected of fraud, and some people accuse the "bad mother" who is suspected of abandoning her. If this "abandonment" case has attracted high public attention due to the popularity of "The Orphan", then the movie sequel "The Orphan: The First Kill" can be said to have completely reversed the popularity of the real event. Probably to satisfy the curiosity of the masses, the film really did the opposite, tracing the past experience of this "wicked girl", not only retaining the original murderous dwarf female character, but also creating the same ruthless adoptive mother character. , opens a brand new thriller story with the "Fight the Evil" mode. Obviously, this script belongs to "two ends to please", and it seems to draw inspiration from real cases, thus completely blackening the image of the adoptive mother. When the "orphan grudge" fell into the "Rashomon", the truth has been thoroughly dramatized.