Natalia Grace Speaks Out in Rare Interview — and Defends Herself Against Allegations of Violence: ‘I'm Not a Liar' (Exclusive)

• PEOPLE's new cover story goes behind the scenes with reality star Natalia Grace in an exclusive interview after her 21st birthday

• Born with dwarfism, Natalia was accused of faking her age and terrorizing her former adoptive family. Now she says she was abused and forced to flee another family in the middle of the night

• Natalia Grace's new family of supporters shares insight as she endures another scandal with her adoptive parents

Although Natalia Grace is known to the world as the enigmatic central figure of the TV docuseries The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, she often experiences a strong aversion to appearing on-camera.

As a TV crew prepares to record footage at a warehouse studio in New York City, the 21-year-old reality TV personality slumps in a chair, visibly shaken. Her eyes well with tears that fog her glasses as her face registers emotions shifting from anxiousness to raw fear and ultimately panic.

But after shouting in a trembling voice, “Everyone get out,” and briefly locking herself in a bathroom, she emerges calm — even cheerful — and ready to explain herself.

“I have anxiety all the way to the roof,” Natalia tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story. “I actually don’t like being filmed or being on a TV show. I’m more of a quiet girl who enjoys sitting on a porch swing with a book and a hot chocolate or coffee in the morning.”

She can be triggered by traumatic memories of events that viewers of the show remember only too well, including the allegations that she was an adult with dwarfism masquerading as a child and that she threatened the Barnetts, her adoptive family, while holding a knife a few years back.

Now, there are more troubling allegations involving her most recent adoptive parents, Cynthia and Antwon Mans, who are said to have subjected her to physical and psychological abuse. “It’s definitely hard to deal with,” she says. “I’m the type of person that hides it until I get too overwhelmed, and it explodes.”

As viewers will soon see on The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter, premiering Jan. 6 and 7 on Investigation Discovery and Max, the serious challenges of Natalia’s life kept coming. This time she mounts a daring, late-night “escape” from the Mans family, whom others in the show claim controlled Natalia for more than a decade, to begin living with the DePauls, a supportive family of little people who originally tried to adopt Natalia in 2009, at their home in upstate New York.

Related: Final Chapter of ID's Natalia Grace Series Promises 'New Set of Challenges and Upheavals'

Speaking to PEOPLE in her first interview since her the show debuted in 2023, Natalia says she wants to tell her side of the story about life with a series of parents and legal guardians, including one former adoptive mother, Kristine Barnett, who said she feared Natalia and called her a violent “sociopath.”

Related: All About Kristine Barnett, Natalia Grace's Former Adoptive Mom Who Now Calls Her 'Sociopath'

“There were a lot of people saying, ‘You’re fake. You’re a liar. You’re a pedophile.’ I’m also known for the little girl that was helpless and was beaten and starved and all that," Natalia adds. "That’s not who I am. But that seems to be the only thing that people know—and that’s why it hurts me a lot.”

Brought to the U.S. by International Adoption

Born in Ukraine in 2003 to 24-year-old mother who relinquished parental rights because of her baby’s dwarfism, Natalia spent much of her early life in an orphanage and unstable homes. Although she arrived in the U.S. through international adoption by New Hampshire couple Dyan and Gary Ciccone in 2008, according to court documents her new American parents soon relinquished parental rights because of her disruptive behavior. Her story took a darker turn when Natalia was adopted again by an Indiana couple with three sons, Kristine and Michael Barnett, in 2010.

At the time, the Barnetts believed she was a 6-year-old girl, but they soon became suspicious of Natalia’s age after claiming they discovered that she had pubic hair, was menstruating and had many adult teeth. In 2012 they successfully petitioned the Marion County probate court to legally change Natalia’s birth year from 2003 to 1989—a process called “re-aging” that turned their then-8-year-old child into a 22-year-old adult overnight.

The Barnetts accused Natalia of trying to poison Kristine's coffee and kill her by dragging her toward an electric fence. They allege that she placed thumb tacks on the stairs face up so that they would step on them. In 2013 Natalia’s parents moved her into apartments in Westfield and Lafayette, Ind., leaving her to live alone as the rest of the family moved to Canada and cut off contact with her.

Natalia recalls struggling to climb the stairs to the second-floor apartment in Lafayette and being unable to reach the kitchen counter and washing machine because of her physical disability. “I really disliked being the girl who was re-aged and lived in her own apartment,” she says. “I didn't understand why I was alone. I just knew I had this instinct in me to push and survive. All I was told was, ‘You're 22 now. Whenever somebody asks you what your age is, you say you're 22 and you tried to murder your family.' I was taught to lie."

'I Was Coached to Lie About My Age'

After a five-year investigation, prosecutors in Tippecanoe County, Ind., charged the Barnetts with neglecting a dependent, but a jury found Michael not guilty in 2022, and charges against Kristine were dropped the following year.  In the second season of The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, Natalia also accused Kristine of physical abuse, including hitting her with a belt, pepper-spraying her in the eyes and giving her three times the recommended dose of a prescribed medication. Natalia denies ever trying to harm her family.

“I feel like I have to defend myself and be like, ‘Do I look like somebody that could push someone twice my size into a fence? Do I look like I could even grip a knife?’ ” she asks, referring to how her dwarfism limits the mobility of her fingers. “I feel like I was brainwashed by the Barnetts. Kristine coached me to lie about my age and say I tried to murder my parents. Why would you do that to your child?” The Barnetts could not be reached for comment.

In 2024, Kristine wrote on Facebook, “[Natalia] was not abused by anyone in my family. Nobody ever took a belt to Natalia, and the allegations that she was ‘beaten’ are just plain false," she adds. "I sat through numerous hospital visits and therapy visits trying to understand and help Natalia and thinking we might be able to find the root of the issue. In the end I learned she is a sociopath."

Kristine Barnett's ex-husband Michael told Good Morning America that doctors treating Natalia allegedly told them "this person is a sociopath. This person is a con artist. You are all in danger."

Related: Inside the Bizarre Tale of Natalia Grace, Adopted from Ukraine: Is She a Child or an Adult 'Sociopath?'

'Escape' in the Middle of the Night

After more than a month of living solo in her Lafayette apartment, Natalia made a new friend when a neighbor noticed her sitting on a sidewalk and stopped to talk. Within days Cynthia Mans had invited Natalia to move in with her and her husband, Christian pastor Antwon Mans, and their 10 children. At first, the Mans charged $250 in monthly rent but they eventually welcomed Natalia as a member of the family.

In 2023, the couple legally adopted Natalia—whose date of birth, after extensive medical tests and DNA analysis, was legally restored to 2003—and asked her to join in the family’s religious life and to help care for her younger siblings.  “I learned how to be a mother,” says Natalia, who looked after the kids and assisted with homework. “I helped raise three of them since they were babies."

Yet as she grew up, tensions developed between Natalia and the Manses over her independence and romantic life. When Natalia was 20 years old, Antwon discovered she was exchanging messages with a man named Neil on social media—even allegedly blackmailing Natalia with sexually explicit videos and photos he seized— and Antwon took her phone away and forbade her to continue contact with her boyfriend.

Meanwhile, several witnesses including neighbors and friends on the show, claim to have seen the Manses whip Natalia with a belt, slap her in the face, lock her in a room and assault her. (The Manses and their lawyers did not respond to People’s efforts to reach them, and Natalia declined to confirm or deny the incidents multiple times.)

After 10 years together, Natalia had had enough: With the help of her U.K.-based boyfriend Neil, who reached Nicole DePaul, 49, an old friend who, with her husband Vince, 51, once tried to adopt Natalia but were turned down. Together, they created complex arrangements for her to leave the Manses. Three days before Christmas in 2023, Nicole drove from the DePaul home in upstate New York and secretly picked up Natalia at a church in Nashville, where the Manses had moved. (Watch an exclusive clip of Natalia's dramatic rescue in the middle of the night below.)

Getting Ready to Live Independently

Natalia was nervous about the ramifications of leaving the family. “Once I got in [Nicole’s] car, I had to text my mom to let her know I wasn’t kidnapped or dead,” she says. “It was an emotional time. I had to spread my wings.” 

Since then, she's lived with the DePauls—who, like Natalia, are little people and have a daughter, Mackenzie, 19—and they have provided her with a long-sought sense of stability. Nicole confesses that while their life together today is days are usually harmonious, there are times when they don’t see eye to eye.

But that’s to be expected, she says, especially with someone like Natalia, who has been diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, a behavioral condition common in children who have spent time in an orphanage, along with having anxiety, ADHD and PTSD. “Did she probably do weird things in the past? Yeah,” says Nicole. “[But] when you take in a child, you take that child as your own. You don’t just get rid of them when they don’t fit into your puzzle.”

Natalia, who was homeschooled by previous families, is studying for her GED and learning to drive as she prepares herself to live independently one day. She also dreams of being a grade school teacher. On her 21st birthday last September, she celebrated with two parties and drank alcohol for the first time. She also recently got her seventh tattoo, including Ukrainian lettering that translates to “trust no one,” which is fitting for her, she says. The money she makes is now deposited into her own account for the first time, which many allege in the show was stolen by the Mans for over a decade.

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Looking back on her journey, Natalia admits, “It’s been a big learning curve for me. For the most part, I’ve made peace. It is definitely a blessing to be alive today. And there’s nothing I can do to change the past.” She has fallen in love, she says, and recently met Neil in person for the first time.

“I’m a girl who loves kids and wants to get married and have children,” she adds. “But one of my biggest things is not making promises I can’t keep. I’ve had too many promises that have been broken. I’m just ready to move on.”

The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter premieres January 6 and January 7 on Investigation Discovery and streams on Max.

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