Teens discover through TikTok they’re actually identical twins who were kidnapped at birth
Topics: Crime, News, TikTok, World News, Parenting
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: Getty/VANO SHLAMOV
Topics: Crime, News, TikTok, World News, Parenting
Two woman made an astonishing discovery when they crossed paths on social media.
Elene Deisadze had been scrolling through TikTok in 2022 when a video popped up on her feed from Anna Panchulidze.
One thing about Anna caught Elene's eye - she looked exactly like her.
Scientists have previously explained that sometimes it is possible for people who are unrelated to look extremely similar through the sheer force of statistics.
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This has happened on other occasions, such as with athletes Brady Feigl and Brady Feigl who have an uncanny similarity but are not related in the slightest.
Elene from Georgia reached out to Anna and the pair began talking and wondering how it could be that they looked so incredibly similar.
Months went by and the pair became friends online.
During that time, both women discovered separately that they had been adopted, but that wasn't it.
Finally, they decided to take a DNA test together after speaking to Georgian journalist, Tamuna Museridze, as their suspicions grew.
Anna, an English student at university, said: “I had a happy childhood, but now my entire past felt like a deception."
Elene said: "We became friends without suspecting we might be sisters, but both of us felt there was some special bond between us."
The pair discovered that by some incredible coincidence they didn't just look similar by chance, they were actually identical twins.
While it was an astonishing moment for the twins to be reunited after all those years, it also prompted questions about how they could have been separated.
Sadly, it's not a happy story.
The twins were separated at birth due to being among tens of thousands of Georgian children who were sold in a baby-trafficking scandal.
Anna said: "I struggled to process the information, to accept the new reality - the people who had raised me for 18 years are not my parents.
The scandal was uncovered by investigative journalists who worked with families seeking to trace their missing relatives.
Over 50 years, some 120,000 babies were kidnapped and sold into human trafficking.
Many of the children are trafficked into sex work and forced labour in countries all over the world.
The networks carrying out the kidnapping involved people at every level, including hospital staff and adoption agencies.
Processing the shock, Anna said: "I feel no anger whatsoever, only immense gratitude to the people who raised me, and joy at finding my flesh and blood."