An adopted woman who searched for her parents for nearly a decade made the shocking discovery that her birth father was actually her friend on Facebook for three years.

Tamuna Museridze is a Georgian journalist who founded a Facebook group in 2021 to find her own family.

In 2016, the woman who raised Tamuna died, and when she was cleaning out her house, she found a birth certificate with her name but the wrong date of birth.

She suspected she might be adopted and started the Facebook group Vedzeb – which means “I’m looking” – to find her birth parents.

Her search led to her uncovering a huge baby trafficking scandal in Georgia that affected thousands of local families.

The investigation found that over more than three decades, thousands of families received the devastating news that their babies had died at birth.

However, the reality was that the newborns were trafficked on the black market, meaning 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 said she knew a woman who concealed a pregnancy and gave birth in September 1984, around the time Tamuna was born brought.

However, when she tried to contact her birth mother, the woman screamed and told Tamuna that she had never had a child before.

She then posted a call on Facebook asking if anyone knew her mother.

A woman responded and said it was her aunt who hid the pregnancy and agreed to a DNA test.

When the test arrived, it confirmed that Tamuna and the woman on Facebook were cousins, meaning the woman who had called Tamuna was actually her mother.

She asked her mother for her father’s name, which turned out to be a man named Gurgen Korava.

Tamuna started searching for her father on Facebook. To her surprise, Gurgen was already her boyfriend and had been following her story for three years to find her father.

“He didn’t even know my birth mother was pregnant,” Tamuna told BBC News. “It was a big surprise for him.”

Tamuna then arranged to meet her 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 met and discovered they had many similar interests, Gurgen was a renowned dancer and Tamuna’s daughters both love dancing.

Since then, she has met a whole new family, including half-siblings, aunts and uncles.

After reconnecting with her father, Tamuna finally had the opportunity to meet her birth mother thanks to a private meeting on a police television station.

At this meeting, Tamuna learned that, unlike the hundreds of people she had helped reunite, she was not a victim of the baby trafficking scandal and that her mother had given up on her.

After a brief encounter with Gurgen and overwhelmed with shame, her mother decided to hide her pregnancy.

She traveled to Tbilisi under the guise of an operation and gave birth to Tamuna. She remained in town until the adoption was arranged.

Tamuna said: “It was painful to learn that I spent ten 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 too was stolen and that they were both victims of the huge scandal.

However, Tamuna told her mother it would be unfair to all parents whose babies were stolen.

Her mother asked her to leave and the couple stopped speaking to each other.