The Real-Life Story That Inspired ‘Orphan’

Editor’s Note: The following contains accounts of abuse that may be disturbing for some readers.

The Big Picture

• The movie Orphan is based on a true story about Barbora Skrlova, who posed as a 12-year-old girl named Anicka in the Czech Republic.
• Barbora’s lies and manipulation led to her being taken in by a woman named Klara Mauerova, who subjected her own children to horrific abuse.
• Barbora managed to evade capture and flee to Norway, where she posed as a 13-year-old boy named Adam until she was eventually caught and brought back to Czechoslovakia to stand trial.

Have you ever seen the movie Orphan, or its prequel Orphan: First Kill? Well if you haven’t, consider this some major spoiler territory. Orphan sees a married couple, devastated after the stillbirth of their third child, adopt a 9-year-old Russian girl, Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman). Only Esther isn’t Esther. She’s Leena Klammer, from Estonia — and she’s not 9. She’s 33, but looks younger due to an affliction known as hypopituitarism, and has posed as a little girl for most of her life. Oh, and she’s a serial killer, with at least seven known murders by her hand.

The very idea that a 33-year-old adult could pose as a 9-year-old, and be adopted as such, has to be pure Hollywood fantasy, right? Even after watching Orphan, you never feel like it’s something that could happen in real life. Someone would surely notice. Here’s the kicker: it did happen in real life. It’s the story of Barbora Skrlova, a 33-year-old woman who posed as a 13-year-old boy named Adam in Norway. It’s the inspiration for Orphan and, somehow, it’s even crazier in real life.

What Did Barbora Skrlova Do?

Barbora Skrlova, like Esther in Orphan, was born with hypopituitarism, so when she met Klara Mauerová in the Czech Republic, her story about being a 12-year-old girl named Anicka, certainly seemed plausible, as did her story about fleeing from a violent group home. The single mother of two took Barbora — Anikka — home, where she lived with her children and her sister Katerina. She treated her like a family member right away, with the intention of adopting her. Anikka claimed to be extremely sick, requiring multiple doctor appointments, but curiously, would only allow Katerina to take her.

As it turned out, the pair were involved in a cult called The Grail Movement, a group that follows the teachings of a 19th-century mystic from Germany and Barbora’s father was head of the Czech branch of the movement at the time. To keep up the charade, Katerina wrote notes about Anikka’s so-called treatments, acting as her doctor. Over time, Barbora persuaded Klara that her problems were all due to her two children and that they should be abused. And they were — most horrifically.

Barbora Skrlova Encouraged Child Abuse

Klara bought in completely, and the list of abuses reported by The Daily Mail which her 8-year-old son Ondrej and 10-year-old Jakub endured is enough to make even the most hardy of souls queasy. Klara locked and chained the boys in the cellar, kept them in cages, or simply handcuffed them to a table for long periods of time, gagging them to stop them from screaming, and forcing them to stand in their own urine. It wasn’t just Klara either, as relatives — including Barbora and Katerina — took part as well by stubbing out lit cigarettes on their bare skin, beating them repeatedly with belts, and trying to drown them.

Still, there’s more. The boys were sexually assaulted and made to cut themselves with knives. The most horrifying act perpetrated on young Ondrej, though, was being partially skinned, with his flesh eaten by those same relatives. It was sick and was only discovered after a nearby neighbor happened to install a baby monitor TV to watch his own newborn child. That monitor just happened to be the same model as one that Klara had installed to watch the boys suffering from the comfort of her kitchen. But when the signals got mixed up one day, the neighbor saw one of the boys beaten, naked, and chained up. The police were called and freed the children — Ondrej, Jakub… and Annika. Barbora, despite being one of the torturers, managed to evade persecution by keeping up her “Annika” ruse and used the opportunity to flee from the orphanage where police had placed her.

Was Barbora Skrlova Caught?

By the time Czech police discovered that “Annika” was not who she claimed to be, Barbora (also known as “the Czech Esther”) had already fled the country. A couple involved with the sect aided Barbora, allowing her to use their son Adam’s passport to gain entry to Denmark, and then on to Norway. The same couple enrolled Barbora into the Marienlyst school near Oslo as 13-year-old “Adam,” which Barbora was able to pass by taping her breasts down and shaving her head.

From September to December 2007, Barbora managed to fool police, classmates, childcare workers, and teachers into believing she was, indeed, 13-year-old Adam. The only problem, though, was she underestimated just how deeply she had people tricked. When “Adam” disappeared from a children’s home in Oslo, the concerned workers at the facility contacted the police, who launched a nationwide search and distributed photos to the media of the missing “child.” They soon found Barbora in Tromsoe, and the jig was up, with Norwegian police officers escorting her back to Czechoslovakia, where she stood trial for her part in the Mauerová abuse case.

How Did Barbora Skrlova Get Away With It?

But how did Barbora manage to fool those that stood in proximity to her daily, for so long? Perhaps Ingjerd Eriksen, principal of the school that Barbora attended for four months as Adam, explains it best through their experience, as told to the Norwegian daily Dagbladet (as translated in the previously cited Reuters article): “Looking back, we can say that we wondered about ‘Adam’s’ behavior. But this is not easy to know. Children at this age are very different, and can be masculine or feminine.”

Interestingly, Orphan itself bears a striking resemblance to the very bizarre tale of Natalia Grace. A true story of a Ukrainian orphan adopted by a couple in 2010 after the release of the movie. Michael and Kristine Barnett adopted the 6-year-old girl but supposedly grew to believe that she was not the age she claimed to be. This led them to claim that Natalia, who has a form of dwarfism called spondyloepiphyseal, was instead an adult woman of evil intent. It’s an odd story of twists and turns, changes to birth certificates, abandonment, and more… but that’s an article for another time.

Orphan is currently streaming on Max in the U.S.

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