Two teenage girls learned through their use of TikTok that, not only are their identical twins, but there is also a dark secret involving the entire country of Georgia.
Videos by Suggest
While revealing how they first met each other, one of the teens, Elene Deisadze, shared with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that as she was scrolling on the social media app in 2022, she had to do a double-take when she came across another teen who looked exactly like her.
Deisadze immediately reached out to the girl, who is Anna Pachulidze, whom she thought was her doppelganger. Not only did the two develop an instant connection, but they also discovered they were adopted.
“I had a happy childhood,” Pachulidze explained about her relationship with the fellow TikToke user, per Daily Mail. “But now my entire past felt like a deception.”
The girls then decided to take a DNA test, only to find out that they weren’t doppelgangers. They were actually identical twins.
“We became friends without suspecting we might be sisters, but both of us felt there was some special bond between us.”
The Identical Twins Found Out They Were Kidnapped After Birth as Part of an Adoption Scheme
Although their story seems like the plot of a Disney film, the identical twins discovered that their adaptations were the result of them both being kidnapped when they were infants.
The twins’ DNA tests were arranged by Georgian journalist, Tamna Museridze, who has been investigating country-wide kidnappings in Georgia that have taken place between 1950 and 2006.
Museridze stated she discovered her own kidnapping when she found two birth certificates in her mother’s house after she died. “We found out it was systemic, and we found out there are more than 100,000 children stolen in Georgia’s hospitals,” Museridze explained.
While investigating the situation, Museridze found out the kidnappings were done by organized criminals. They had recruited doctors, other medical staff members, and even government officials for the schemes.
To successfully kidnap infants, the accomplices would tell the parents that their children had died. They would then sell the babies to families, who did not realize their new children were stolen.
The Girls’ Families React to the News
Pachulidze’s mother stated that she did adopt her and had spent thousands of dollars to adopt her in 2005. She had waited years for an adoption to go through.
“I had no clue,” her mother said. “At that time, you had to wait ages to adopt somebody. My husband and I were personally waiting for six years before we got Ana. We really had no idea about the corrupt system … and I wouldn’t even imagine such a thing.”
Elene’s adoptive mother, Lia Korkotadze, also stated that adopting from an orphanage seemed virtually impossible. This was due to the extensive waiting lists. She was able to adopt Elene when she was six months old through a local hospital.
“They brought Elene right to my house,” Korkotadze recalled. She noted she never suspected there was “anything illegal.”
The identical twins are grateful for their families and are able to find each other. However, they are hoping to still reunite with their biological parents.
“Maybe they don’t even know we exist because when children were adopted sometimes their biological parents were lied to,” Elene added. “[Told] your child is dead, maybe our parents think we are dead, we are not even alive, it would be so great to find them and tell them the truth.”