In November 2021, a 19-year-old Georgian girl Amy woke up and decided she ‘had to’ get a piercing that day.
After the blue-haired-teen had her eyebrow pierced, she shared a clip of the procedure on TikTok.
Another user of the platform, Ano, was sent the video by a friend, who told her to check out how similar the two girls looked.
But it was not the first time the two girls’ paths had indirectly crossed, as a new BBC world service documentary Betrayal at Birth: Georgia’s Stolen Children explains.
Years earlier, when Amy was 12, she was told by a friend that a girl who looked just like her had been dancing the jive on Georgia’s Got Talent.
Amy is one of the long lost twins who is reunited with her twin sister in the BBC’s Betrayal at Birth: Georgia’s Stolen Children
Amy told her family, but they brushed it off. ‘Everyone has a doppelganger,’ her mother said.
But in fact this girl was Ano, she was Amy’s twin, but no one knew it.
It was not until after the TikTok video was shared that the two, who lived 320km apart, finally connected on social media, before eventually meeting in person.
Looking at documents shed no light on their situation: their birth certificates said that they were born at the same hospital, Kirtskhi Maternity, but weeks apart.
However, upon seeing each other in person, it was clear to them that they were identical twins.
According to Amy, speaking to BBC News: ‘It was like looking in a mirror, the exact same face, exact same voice. I am her and she is me.’
In addition to looking the same, they both liked the same music, loved to dance and even had the same hairstyle.
And beneath the surface, there were also similarities. They both had the same genetic disease, a bone disorder called dysplasia.
![It was an unexpected TikTok video of Amy getting her ears pierced that ended up bringing the two sisters back together](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/26/15/80509179-13010119-It_was_an_unexpected_TikTok_video_of_Amy_getting_her_ears_pierce-a-13_1706284644050.jpg)
It was an unexpected TikTok video of Amy getting her ears pierced that ended up bringing the two sisters back together
It felt like they were unravelling a mystery together. ‘Every time I learned something new about Ano, things got stranger,’ Amy said.
They decided to confront their families and for the first time they learned the truth.
They had been adopted, separately, a few weeks apart in 2002.
Amy was upset and felt her whole life had been a lie. ‘It’s a crazy story,’ she said, ‘But it’s true.’
Ano was ‘angry and upset with [her] family, but [she] just wanted the difficult conversations to be over so that we could all move on’.
It turned out that unable to have children, Amy and Ano’s mothers were told by friends that there were unwanted babies at the local hospital, and if they paid the doctors they could take a baby home and raise her as their own.
Neither of the adoptive families knew the girls were twins and despite paying a lot of money to adopt their daughters, they say they hadn’t realised it was illegal.
Amy and Ano were part of a wider black market, which saw new parents in Georgia being told that their new-born babies were dead, when they were actually being sold illegally has been exposed.
Now, this story has been told in a new television film.
Betrayal at Birth: Georgia’s Stolen Children, is a new documentary from the BBC World Service which ‘follows the emotive journeys of Georgians trying to find out how and why their families were separated’.
Another piece of the puzzle is the Georgian journalist Tamuna Museridze, who had set up a Facebook group called Vezdeb after finding incorrect details on her birth certificate in 2021.
![Bizarrely, years earlier, Amy had seen Amo (pictured) on Georgia's got Talent, and showed people saying she looked like her twin, but she was written off](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/26/16/80507821-13010119-Bizarrely_years_earlier_Amy_had_seen_Amo_pictured_on_Georgia_s_g-a-5_1706288190911.jpg)
Bizarrely, years earlier, Amy had seen Amo (pictured) on Georgia’s got Talent, and showed people saying she looked like her twin, but she was written off
Her intent in setting up the group was to find her own family, but her major success led to her being named one of BBC’s 100 Women recipients.
The group – which now has more than 230,000 members – resulted in the exposure of a baby trafficking scandal which affected tens of thousands and spanned decades.
Together with DNA websites, the groups is described as having ‘blown wide open a dark chapter in Georgia’s history.
That dark chapter? A black market in adoption that stretched across Georgia from the early 1970s to 2006.
Counting the number of people who have contacted her, combined with the time frame and nationwide spread of cases, Tamuna estimates that at least tens of thousands of babies were stolen and that the practice ‘was systemic.’
Georgia was going through a period of turmoil and as hospital staff were involved they thought it was legitimate.
Tamuna told the BBC that it was expensive to buy a child, about 1,000 maneti for a girl and 1,500 maneti for a boy – about a year’s salary in Georgia.
She discovered that some children ended up with foreign families in the US, Canada, Cyprus, Russia and Ukraine.
Amy and Ano shared their story on Tamuna’s group and received a reply from a young woman in Germany who thought they could be related as her mother had given birth to twins at Kirtskhi Maternity Hospital in 2002.
DNA tests revealed they were, indeed, related.
Ano and Amy’s story shows the human cost of this black market.
When the twins discuss their first meeting, they reveal how emotive it was to see each other, describing the moment as being like ‘looking in a mirror’.
Ano described how she’d felt like something was missing throughout her childhood.
And then one of her friends sent her the video of Amy getting her eyebrow pierced and it was like looking at herself.
They both looked for each other on social media. It was Amy who found and added Ano, before they started talking then eventually meeting.
Amy said: ‘I texted her first [saying] “how long I have been looking for you”, and Ano replied “me too”.’
![Twin Ano (pictured) revealed that while she'd always had a happy childhood, she's always felt something was missing](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/26/16/80512511-13010119-image-a-3_1706287990429.jpg)
Twin Ano (pictured) revealed that while she’d always had a happy childhood, she’s always felt something was missing
In an emotive moment captured in the new film, the twins are reunited with their birth mother, Aza.
Later, the twins say that their mother explained she had been ill after giving birth and fell into a coma. When she awoke, hospital staff told her that shortly after the babies were born, they had died.
Aza said that meeting Amy and Ano has given her life new meaning and although they are not close, they are still in touch.
Other women like Aza are also looking for the children, whom they were told had died at birth, but whom they now know may be alive.
Irina Otarashvili and her daughter Nino tell the BBC of their hunt for a lost son and brother.
In 1978, Irina was told by doctors at a maternity hospital in Kvareli that the healthy twin boys she had given birth to just three days earlier had died.
![TWINS REUNITED: NOw Amy (pictured, left) and Ano (pictured, right) have been reunited in person thanks to social media](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/26/15/80509181-13010119-image-a-17_1706284741405.jpg)
TWINS REUNITED: NOw Amy (pictured, left) and Ano (pictured, right) have been reunited in person thanks to social media
She told BBC News that although she and her husband couldn’t make sense of the loss of their babies, they accepted what they were told as in Soviet times ‘you didn’t question authority.’
They were given the remains of the twins in a suitcase, which they were advised not to open. 44 years later, after finding Tamuna’s Facebook group, Nino encouraged her mother to open the suitcase.
‘My heart was racing,’ she says. ‘When we opened it there were no bones, just sticks. We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.’
Local police confirmed the contents were branches from a grape vine and there was no trace of human remains.
In 2006, Georgia changed its adoption legislation and strengthened anti-trafficking laws, making illegal adoptions more difficult.
In 2022, the Georgian government launched an investigation into historic child trafficking. It told the BBC it has spoken to more than 40 people but the cases were ‘very old and historic data has been lost’.
Journalist Tamuna Museridze says she has shared information but the government hasn’t said when it will release its report.
It has made at least four attempts to get to the bottom of what happened.
![Journalist Tamuna Museridze (pictured) appeared on the list of 2023's BBC 100 Women thanks for her work in helping to reuninte families](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/26/16/80508373-13010119-Journalist_Tamuna_Museridze_pictured_appeared_on_the_list_of_202-a-7_1706288233178.jpg)
Journalist Tamuna Museridze (pictured) appeared on the list of 2023’s BBC 100 Women thanks for her work in helping to reuninte families
These include an investigation in 2003 into international child trafficking which led to a number of arrests and a 2015 investigation during which the general director of the Rustavi maternity hospital, Aleksandre Baravkovi, was arrested but cleared.
He returned to his job where he continues to practise today.
Tamuna, of course, appeared on the list of 2023’s BBC 100 Women.
This is an annual list of 100 influential and inspiring women from around the world. She won her place for her organisation’s work helping reunite hundreds of families.
The BBC approached the Georgian Interior Ministry for further information on individual cases but we were told that specific details would not be released due to data protection.
Betrayal at Birth: Georgia’s Stolen Children is available on BBC iPlayer now.
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