Indiana prosecutors say a couple rented an apartment for their 11-year-old adopted daughter in 2013 and then moved to Canada without her, instructing her to tell anyone who asked that she was 22.
INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana prosecutors have charged a couple with abandoning their adopted daughter in 2013 and moving to Canada, leaving the girl, who was just 11 years old and has dwarfism, in a rented apartment but providing her with no other financial support.
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.
The girl told a detective with the Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Department in September 2014 that she had come to the U.S. “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 northwest of Indianapolis.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
'Ecological train wrecks': Feral hogs from Canada are encroaching on MontanaWeighing up to 400 pounds, wild pigs destroy crops, forests and property and carry diseases that could devastate livestock.
Read more »
Businesses Escalate Push for Trade Pact with Canada, MexicoU.S. business groups are ramping up efforts to win passage of the Trump administration’s trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, even as House Democrats and other critics say the deal needs revisions.
Read more »
They’re telling us there’s a chance: Why the debate nonqualifiers won’t quit (yet)Why the longest long shots of the still-crowded 2020 Democratic presidential field say they're staying in the fray.
Read more »
U.S. Deficit Tops $1 Trillion in First 11 Months of Fiscal Year, Treasury SaysThe U.S. budget gap widened to more than $1 trillion in the first 11 months of the fiscal year, the Treasury Department said, the first time deficits have topped that mark in seven years.
Read more »
WSJ News Exclusive | Big U.S. Investment Banks Crowd Into Aramco IPOGlobal investment bankers launched the underwriting process for the listing of Saudi oil giant Aramco, a sign financiers who shunned the kingdom after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi are turning the page.
Read more »