Two Georgian twins who were sold to separate families at birth have reunited all thanks to a dance routine and a TikTok video.
The power of social media truly is wild: there are genius clips posted every day that can save your finances, food challenges that make you feel a little bit better about your diet and juicy tales of cruise ship crime that will blow your mind.
But the internet can also change lives, which is what brings us to today's astounding story.
Back in 2021, TikTok was used as a force for extraordinary good as it reunited twin sisters Amy Khvitia and Ano Sartania, who had been separated at birth.
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The first time Amy unknowingly saw her twin sister was back in 2014, when she was residing at her godmother’s house near the Black Sea.
One evening, she was watching Georgia’s Got Talent and was dumbstruck to discover that a girl with her face was dancing a Jive in front of the judges.
Recalling the bizarre moment, Amy said to the BBC: "Everyone was calling my mum and asking: 'Why is Amy dancing under another name?’”
However, when she mentioned the moment to her mother, she reportedly brushed it off as a weird resemblance.
“Everyone has a doppelganger,” Amy recounted.
Seven years later, Ano Sartania, then 19, was scrolling social media and came across a video of a girl she thought looked strangely familiar.
The clip in question was of Amy getting her eyebrow pierced while sporting blue hair.
It’s said that Ano thought it was ‘cool’ that the content creator looked like her and set off on a mission to track down the girl.
After having no luck finding any contact information for the woman online, she shared the TikTok video to a university WhatsApp group and sent out a plea for information.
Amazingly, someone in the group chat was familiar with Amy and soon connected the pair on Facebook.
Amy instantly knew that Ano was the girl she had watched on Georgia’s Got Talent all those years ago, and messaged saying she had been looking for her ‘for so long’.
After meeting in the flesh for the first time on top of an escalator, the pair knew that they must be related - but they didn’t know how.
"It was like looking in a mirror, the exact same face, exact same voice. I am her and she is me,” Amy said.
After uncovering similar details about one another they reportedly decided to confront their families and ask what was going on.
It was after these difficult conversations that the women learned they had been separately adopted a few weeks apart in 2002 after being born in Kirtskhi maternity hospital.
After digging deeper into their histories, the pair learned that the details written on their birth certificates were ‘wrong’.
It later came out that both Amy and Ano’s adoptive mothers were told that there were unwanted babies at the now-demolished hospital and that they would need to pay to take them home.
It’s claimed that neither of the adoptive families knew that the duo were twins and hadn’t realised that buying babies was illegal.
According to the publication, neither family would reveal how much money was exchanged and why details on the birth certificates were different.
Following their reconciliation, the twins have since been reunited with their birth mother, Aza.
She claims that she fell into a coma after giving birth to the pair and was later told that who was told that her children had died.
Unfortunately, the twins are not the only victims of this Georgian ‘baby black market’ as journalist Tamuna Museridze discovered that she was also adopted back in 2021.
Since uncovering incorrect details on her own birth certificate, Tamuna has worked tirelessly to reunite hundreds of families.
Regarding the alleged Georgian adoption operation, she told the aforementioned publication: “The scale is unimaginable, up to 100,000 babies were stolen. It was systemic.”
In 2002, the Georgian government launched an investigation into this period of child trafficking and in 2005 changed its adoption legislation.
A year later, the government strengthened anti-trafficking laws, making illegal adoptions more difficult.
The BBC has reportedly approached the Georgian Interior Ministry for further information on these cases but was allegedly told that specific details would not be released due to data protection.
Topics: Crime, Life, World News, Social Media, TikTok
Ella Scott