Amy and Ano are identical Georgian twins, but soon after their birth they were taken from their mother, who was told they were dead, and sold to separate families. But years later, thanks to a TV talent show and a video on TikTok and other social networks, they found each other by chance.
The BBC told their story in a long article on the tragedy of the children in Georgia stolen from hospitals and sold. When Amy Khvitia was now 12 years old one day she was in her house, not far from the Black Sea and watching Georgiàs Got Talent on TV. There was a little girl dancing and she looked just like her. “Everyone was calling my mom and asking, ‘Why is Amy dancing under another name?’” she said
Then in 2021, when Amy published a video of herself getting her eyebrow pierced in Tbilisi on TikTok, a boy reported that video to another nineteen-year-old, Ano Sartania. “He thought it was beautiful because he looked like me,” he said in turn. Ano therefore became curious, and started looking for the girl with the piercing. It took him some time and groups on Facebook and WhatsApp, but in the end he found her.
Upon first contact, Amy immediately understood that Ano was the girl she had seen years before on TV. In the following days they discovered that they had a lot in common: both born in Kirtskhi hospital, they loved the same music and even had the same genetic disease, a form of dysplasia. They then decided to meet and seeing each other in person “it was like looking in the mirror”, says Amy, who then realized they were twins.
Talking to their families they learned for the first time that they were adopted, in 2002. Amy’s mother couldn’t have children and a friend told her there was an unwanted baby girl at the local hospital. She would have to pay the doctors but she could take her home and raise her as her own. Ano’s mother was told the same story. Georgia was going through a time of turbulence, and since the hospital staff was involved, they thought it was legitimate.
At that point, the two girls also started looking for their biological mother and managed to find her, thanks to a Facebook group dedicated to reuniting Georgian families with children suspected of having been illegally adopted at birth. Her mother lived in Germany. she and explained to them that she had become ill after giving birth and had fallen into a coma. When she woke up, hospital staff told her that shortly after her birth, her babies had died.