An adopted woman who had searched for her parents for nearly a decade made the shocking discovery that her biological father had been her friend on Facebook for three years.
Tamuna Museridze is a Georgian journalist who created a Facebook group in 2021 to try to find her own parents.
In 2016, the woman who raised Tamuna died, and while cleaning her house, she found a birth certificate with her name but the wrong date of birth.
She suspected she might be adopted and founded the Facebook group Vedzeb – which means “I’m searching” – to find her birth parents.
Her search led her to uncover a massive baby trafficking scandal in Georgia that affected thousands of Georgian families.
The investigation found that for more than three decades, thousands of families in Georgia received the devastating news that their babies had died at birth.
The reality, however, was that newborns were trafficked on the black market, which meant that thousands of Georgians had no idea who their real families were.
Tamuna managed to find her mother after receiving a message from a person who claimed to know a woman who hid a pregnancy and gave birth in September 1984, around the time Tamuna was born.
Georgian journalist Tamuna Museridze created a Facebook group to help people searching for their biological children
She uncovered a huge baby trafficking scandal in Georgia while trying to find her own birth parents.
However, when she tried to contact her biological mother, the woman screamed and told Tamuna that she had never had a child.
He then posted an appeal on Facebook asking if anyone knew his mother.
One woman responded by saying her aunt had hidden the pregnancy and agreed to take a DNA test.
When the evidence arrived, it confirmed that Tamuna and the woman on Facebook were cousins, meaning that the woman Tamuna had called was in fact her mother.
He asked his mother the name of his father, who turned out to be a man named Gurgen Korava.
Tamuna started searching for her father on Facebook. To her surprise, Gurgen was already her friend and had been following her story to try to find her father for three years.
“He didn’t even know my birth mother had been pregnant,” Tamuna said. bbc news. “It was a big surprise for him.”
Tamuna uses a website that helps use DNA testing to reunite family members and search for ancestry
Tamuna then arranged a meeting with his father and traveled 160 miles to his hometown of Zugdidi.
She said the moment her father looked at her, he knew she was his daughter.
They caught up and realized that they had many similar interests, Gurgen had been a renowned dancer and Tamuna’s daughters love to dance.
Since then she has met a whole new family, including half-siblings, aunts and uncles.
After reconnecting with her father, Tamuna finally got the chance to meet her birth mother, thanks to a Police TV company hosting a private meeting.
At this meeting, Tamuna discovered that, unlike the hundreds of people she had helped round up, she was not a victim of the baby trafficking scandal and had been abandoned by her mother.
After a brief meeting with Gurgen and overwhelmed by shame, her mother chose to hide her pregnancy.
She traveled to Tblisi under the pretext of surgery and gave birth to Tamuna, remaining in the city until the adoption was arranged.
Tamuna said: ‘It was painful knowing that I spent 10 days alone with her before the adoption. I try not to think about it.
She said her mother asked her to lie and tell the world that she was also robbed and that they were both victims of the big scandal.
However, Tamuna told her mother that it would be unfair to all the parents whose babies were stolen.
His mother asked him to leave and the couple did not speak again.