Indiana prosecutors have charged a couple with abandoning their adopted daughter, who was aged 11, but had her age legally charged to 22 and has dwarfism, in a rented apartment but providing her with no other financial support.
Tippecanoe County prosecutors filed neglect charges against Kristine Elizabeth Barnett, 45, and Michael Barnett, 43 for abandoning the Ukrainian girl 2013 and moving to Canada.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed in the case, the couple adopted the girl in 2010 and a doctor who examined her that year determined she was about 8 years old. When a detective spoke to Michael Barnett earlier this month, he said he and his wife had the girl's age legally changed to 22 in June of 2012 and that his wife told her to tell anyone who asked that she "looks young but was actually twenty-two."
Barnett told the detective that he and his wife rented an apartment in Lafayette in July 2013 and, despite knowing that the child knew no one in that city, they left her there and moved to Canada, investigators wrote in the affidavit. Barnett said that other than paying the apartment's rent, they provided the girl with no financial support.
The girl told a detective with the Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Department in September 2014 that she had come to the US "through an adoption" in 2008 from her native Ukraine and that the Barnetts adopted her two years later. She said she lived with the Barnetts in Hamilton County, just north of Indianapolis, for about two years, after which they rented the apartment for her in Lafayette, the Tippecanoe County seat about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of Indianapolis.
