Twins separated at birth reunite through TikTok video
What's the story
Twins Amy Khvitia and Ano Sartania, separated at birth and sold to different families, found each other years later through a TV show and a TikTok video. The sisters are among many babies in Georgia who were stolen from hospitals and sold, with cases reported as recently as 2005. They embarked on a journey to uncover the truth, eventually meeting their birth mother in Germany.
Search
The beginning of their search
Amy first spotted her lookalike at age 12 while watching Georgia's Got Talent. In November 2021, she posted a TikTok video that reached Ano through a friend. After connecting on Facebook and discovering they were born in the same maternity hospital in western Georgia, they decided to meet. "It was like looking in a mirror, the exact same face, exact same voice. I am her and she is me," Amy told BBC.
Family
Confronting their families
Upon confronting their families, the twins learned they were adopted separately in 2002. Both adoptive mothers were told similar stories about unwanted babies at the local hospital and paid doctors to take them home. Neither family knew the girls were twins or that the adoptions were illegal. The sisters then began to question if their biological parents had sold them for profit.
Meet
Meeting their birth mother
Amy joined a Facebook group dedicated to reuniting Georgian families with children suspected of being illegally adopted at birth. A young woman in Germany responded, revealing that her mother had given birth to twin girls in 2002 at the same hospital and had doubts about their reported deaths. DNA tests confirmed that the woman was their sister, living with their birth mother, Aza, in Germany. The twins traveled to Germany to meet Aza.
History
Uncovering a dark chapter in Georgia's history
The Facebook group, Vedzeb, meaning "I'm searching" in Georgian, has over 230,000 members and has exposed a baby trafficking scandal affecting tens of thousands of people, spanning decades. Journalist Tamuna Museridze, who set up the group, discovered a black market in adoption that stretched across Georgia from the early 1970s to 2006. The Georgian government launched an investigation into historic child trafficking in 2022 but has not yet released its report.