Teen girl finds someone who looked just like her on TikTok. What she found out was life-changing.

Having a twin is like having a companion who feels less like a mirror and more like the missing puzzle piece that completes a person. It's the comfort of always having someone by your side and never really being alone. But in a shocking incident a few years ago, Elene Deisadze, a 19-year-old Georgian girl, was reunited with her twin sister, who she didn't even know existed. In 2022, while browsing through TikTok, she came across a girl who looked just like her, and she froze in disbelief.

Curious Deisadze immediately got in touch with the girl, Anna Panchulidze, and the two quickly grew close. However, there was a much deeper connection beneath their growing friendship. They found out after talking online for months that they were both adopted and had no knowledge of their biological families. Due to this mystery, they decided to have a DNA test, which revealed the startling fact that they were identical twins, as reported by the New York Post. Although this discovery was shocking, the girls quickly realized that these stories are more common than they ever thought.

Panchulidze said, “I had a happy childhood, but now my entire past felt like a deception." She then added, "I struggled to process the information, to accept the new reality - the people who had raised me for 18 years are not my parents." At the same time, she acknowledged, "I feel no anger whatsoever, only immense gratitude to the people who raised me, and joy at finding my flesh and blood." Talking about their bond, Deisadze said, "We became friends without suspecting we might be sisters, but both of us felt there was some special bond between us." According to reports, the twins were separated at birth as a result of a huge child trafficking scandal in Georgia, where tens of thousands of babies were sold secretly.

Through the efforts of investigative journalists working with families looking for their lost loved ones, the shocking scandal was publicly exposed. As reported by Unilad, approximately 100,000 kids went missing and were forced into human trafficking for over five decades, with many of them being forced into hard labor and sex exploitation across the globe. This vast network of kidnappers involved people at every level, including hospitals and adoption agencies. Georgian journalist Tamuna Museridze, who was working on uncovering this nationwide abduction scheme spanning from 1950 to 2006, helped arrange the DNA test that confirmed Deisadze and Panchulidze’s true connection.

During an interview, Museridze said, “We found out it was systemic, and we found out there are more than 100,000 children stolen in Georgia’s hospitals." Panchulidze's mother revealed that after years of waiting to adopt, she paid thousands of dollars in 2005 to bring Panchulidze into her family. She said, “I had no clue. At that time, you had to wait ages to adopt somebody. My husband and I were personally waiting for six years before we got Ana. We really had no idea about the corrupt system … and I wouldn’t even imagine such a thing.” Although the sisters are thankful for the families that raised them and to have met each other, they still wait to meet their biological parents.