TBILISI: A young Georgian student, Elene Deisadze, a woman browsing social media in 2022 stumbles upon a profile of a girl, Anna Panchulidze, who looks exactly like her. They become friends and later discover they were both adopted. A DNA test reveals they are identical twins.
"Despite a happy childhood, this discovery makes my past feel like a lie," says one of the twins, a university student.
This is not an isolated case. Journalists and families searching for lost relatives uncover a decades-long baby trafficking scandal. Mothers were told their babies died shortly after birth, but the scheme involved a network of hospitals, nurseries, and adoption agencies stealing children and selling them to adoptive parents within the country and abroad.
The investigation reveals that illegal adoptions spanned over 50 years. Maternity hospitals, nurseries, and adoption agencies colluded to take children, falsify birth records, and place them with new families for money.
Two young women, now 19, began piecing together their hidden past two years ago. They felt a special connection despite not knowing they were sisters. Both sets of adoptive parents eventually revealed their adopted status. A DNA test confirmed they were identical twins.
"It's hard to accept this new reality," says one sister. "But I feel immense gratitude to those who raised me and joy at finding my biological twin."
A journalist who runs a social media group dedicated to reuniting stolen babies facilitates the DNA test. The group has over 200,000 members, including mothers who lied about their babies' deaths.
The journalist established the group in 2021 while searching for her own family after learning she was adopted. The investigation uncovered the mass baby-selling operation.
Hospitals lied to mothers, claiming their babies died and were buried in non-existent cemeteries. The babies were secretly sold to adoptive parents.
Some adoptive parents were unaware of the illegal adoptions, while others knowingly bypassed legal procedures to avoid long waiting lists.
Evidence suggests at least 120,000 babies were stolen and sold between 1950 and 2006. The price varied depending on the destination country, reaching up to $30,000 for international adoptions.
Adoptive parents often paid significant sums to arrange adoptions domestically.
A woman who adopted a baby after facing fertility issues describes the lengthy legal process to formalize the adoption despite the illegality behind it.
The story of these twins is not unique. Another set of twin sisters also separated at birth were sold to different families and later reunited on social media.
Over 800 families have been reunited thanks to the social media group. The government has made limited attempts to investigate the scheme, resulting in a handful of arrests over the past two decades.
An official acknowledges an ongoing investigation but provides no details. The Prime Minister claims the country is a leader in combating trafficking, but the journalist leading the reunification effort criticizes the government's lack of substantial support.