Georgia woman searched for her biological parents and discovered her father was a friend on Facebook

Tamuna Museridze took a deep breath and made the phone call she had been dreaming about ever since she found out she might be adopted.

She was calling the woman she believed was her biological mother. She knew it might not lead to a fairy-tale reunion – but she didn’t expect the reaction to be cold and angry.

“She started screaming, screaming – she said she hadn’t given birth to a child yet. She wanted nothing to do with me,” Tamuna recalled, explaining that she felt more surprised than upset by that answer.

“I was ready for anything, but her reaction was beyond what I could have imagined.”

Tamuna is not ready to leave yet. She wanted to know the circumstances of her adoption, and there was one more thing she wanted that only her mother could tell her – her father’s name.

The search for Tamuna began in 2016, after the woman who raised her passed away. Cleaning the house, Tamuna finds a birth certificate with her own name but the wrong date of birth, and she begins to suspect that she is adopted. After doing some research, she started a Facebook group called Vedzeb, or I’m Searching, in hopes of finding her biological parents.

Instead, she discovered a child trafficking scandal in Georgia that had affected the lives of tens of thousands of people. For decades, parents were lied to that their newborns were dead – then the babies were sold.

Tamuna is a journalist and her work has helped reunite hundreds of families, however – so far – she still cannot solve the mystery of her own origins and wonders if she has been stolen as a child or not.

“I am a journalist writing about this story, but it is also my personal mission,” she said.

The breakthrough in her search came over the summer, when she received a message through her Facebook group. It was from someone living in rural Georgia who said they knew a woman who hid her pregnancy and gave birth in Tbilisi in September 1984. That was around the time Tamuna was born – the day that she shared publicly.

This person believes that this woman is Tamuna’s biological mother – and importantly, they have named the child.

Tamuna immediately searched for her online but found nothing, so she decided to post an appeal on Facebook asking if anyone knew her.

A woman immediately reacted and said that the woman who hid her pregnancy was her biological aunt. She asked Tamuna to take down the post but she agreed to do a DNA test.

While waiting for the results, Tamuna called her mother.

A week later, the DNA results came in, showing that Tamuna and the woman on Facebook were indeed cousins. With this evidence, Tamuna convinced her mother to admit the truth and reveal her father’s name. It was a man named Gurgen Khorava.

“The first two months were shocking, I couldn’t believe these things were happening to me,” she recalls. I can’t believe I found them.”

When Tamuna learned Gurgen’s name, she quickly found him on Facebook. It turned out he had been following her story on social media — her work connecting families is widely known across Georgia.

Tamuna was surprised to learn that he had “been on my friends list for three years.” It’s just that he hasn’t realized that he is a part of her story.

“He didn’t even know my biological mother was pregnant,” Tamuna said. “It was a big surprise for him.”

They soon arranged to meet in his hometown of Zugdidi in western Georgia – about 160 miles (260km) from where she lived in Tbilisi.

Looking back, Tamuna thought she was in a state of shock, but when she walked to Gurgen’s garden gate, she felt strangely calm.

When the 72-year-old man appeared, they hugged each other and stopped to look at each other and smile.

“It was strange, as soon as he looked at me, he knew I was his daughter,” she recalls. “I have a lot of mixed emotions.”

She had so many questions and didn’t know where to start. “We just sat together, observed each other and tried to find common ground,” she said.

As the two talked, they realized they had many interests – Gurgen had been a famous dancer at the Georgia State Ballet and was pleased to learn that Tamuna’s daughters – his granddaughters – shared similar interests. passionate about him.

“They both love to dance, and so does my husband,” she said, smiling.

Gurgen invites the whole family to his home to meet Tamuna, introducing her to a large group of new relatives – half-siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. The family agrees that they have a lot in common. “Out of all his children, I look the most like my father,” she said.

They spent the evening sharing stories, eating traditional Georgian food, and singing while Gurgen played the accordion.

Even though she has now met her father, Tamuna still has a burning question: was she – like thousands of other Georgians – kidnapped by her mother at birth and sold? Her adoptive parents are no longer alive, so she can’t turn to them for answers.

She finally had the opportunity to consult her biological mother in October. A Polish television company was filming a documentary about Tamuna and brought her to meet her mother, who agreed to speak privately with her. Miss.

Unlike many of the people Tamuna helped reunite, she discovered that she herself was not a stolen child. Instead, her mother disowned her and kept it a secret for 40 years.

Her parents were not romantically involved and had only met each other briefly. Her mother – too embarrassed – chose to hide her pregnancy. In September 1984, she went to Tbilisi, told everyone she was going to have surgery and instead gave birth to a daughter. She stayed there until arrangements were made for Tamuna’s adoption.

“It hurts to know that I was alone with her for 10 days before the adoption. I try not to think about it,” Tamuna reflects.

She said her mother asked her to lie and tell everyone that she had been stolen. “She told me that if I didn’t say I was stolen it would be over between us… and I said I couldn’t do that.”

Tamuna feels this would be unfair to all parents whose children were stolen. “If I lied, no one would believe those mothers,” she explained.

Her mother then asked her to leave the house and they haven’t spoken since.

“Would I do it all again?” she reflected. “Of course, I learned a lot about my new family.”

Stolen Children in Georgia

Twins Amy and Ano were separated from their mother when they were young and sold. They happened to know each other and quickly discovered thousands of other people in Georgia had also been stolen from hospitals.

See more about this story above BBC iPlayer (UK only).

You can also watch the documentary above YouTube.