Georgian woman discovers biological father on Facebook
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Georgian woman discovers biological father on Facebook

Posted on by Amelia Pressman

Tamuna Museridze, a Georgian, discovered that her biological father was her Facebook friend while searching for her biological parents, the BBC reported on Sunday.

Museridze’s search began in 2016 when the mother who raised her died. While cleaning her house, Museridze found her birth certificate with an incorrect date of birth. She began to suspect that she might be adopted.

Hoping to find her birth parents, she started a Facebook group called Vedzeb, or I’m Looking. Instead of finding her family, she uncovered a Georgian baby trafficking ring. For several decades, parents were lied to about their babies dying when in fact the children were being sold.

Museridze, a journalist and graduate of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, has worked to reunite hundreds of families affected by baby trafficking. Despite all her efforts, she has not yet been able to find her birth parents. According to the BBC, she wondered if she, too, had been stolen as a child.

Museridze told BBC: “I was a journalist on this story, but it was also a personal mission for me.”

Her first breakthrough came this summer when she received a message on Facebook saying someone knew a woman who had concealed a birth in September 1984. The woman came from the same city as Museridze.

A baby is cleaned and examined by the pediatrician after birth. (Source: Inez Carter. Via Shutterstock)

Suspecting that the woman mentioned could be her biological mother, Museridze searched for her online. She resigned from her post at the request of the woman’s niece, but was promised a DNA test to determine any blood relationships. According to the BBC, after a week of waiting, DNA results confirmed that the woman was Museridze’s biological mother.

Since Museridze had no idea who her biological parents were, she called her mother, and although she learned her biological father’s name, the conversation did not go as she expected. “She started screaming and screaming – she said she hadn’t given birth. She wanted nothing to do with me,” the BBC quoted Museridze as saying. “I was ready for anything, but her reaction was beyond anything I could have imagined.”

Connecting with her father

When she found out her father’s name was Gurgen Khorava, she searched for him on Facebook. It turns out Gurgen had been following her social media the entire time, as she is widely known throughout Georgia for her work in family reunification.

She was stunned to find out that he had “been on my friends list for three years… He didn’t even know my birth mother was pregnant. It was a big surprise for him.”

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Shortly after making contact, they arranged to meet in his hometown of Zugdidi in western Georgia.

As she approached her meeting, she was shocked, but as she walked towards the gate of Gurgen, she felt surprisingly relaxed.

“It was strange. When he looked at me, he knew I was his daughter,” she said. When they met, she and her 72-year-old father hugged and smiled at each other for a moment. They went in and “just sat together, watching each other and trying to find something in common.”

As she continued to talk, she realized that they had many common interests, including dancing. Gurgen was once a successful dancer with the State Ballet of Georgia, and Museridze’s daughters, Gurgen’s new granddaughters, also have a passion for dance.

Gurgen introduced Museridze to new relatives, including half-siblings, cousins ​​and uncles. They all agreed that she bore a strong resemblance to them. “Of all his children, I look the most like my father,” she told the BBC.

Although she was now happily reunited with her father, one question still loomed: had she been stolen at birth and sold, as so many other Georgians had been?

When a Polish television station contacted Museridze in October about filming a documentary, she was finally able to meet her birth mother privately.

Unlike the many families Museridze had helped connect, she discovered that she had not been stolen at birth, but rather that her mother had given her up and kept it a secret for over 40 years.

Museridze reflected that her mother had asked her to lie and tell the public that she had been stolen. “She told me that everything between us would end if I didn’t say I was stolen.” Museridze refused and they have not spoken since.

She felt that this falsehood would be unfair to the parents of stolen babies. “If I lie, no one will believe these mothers anymore. Would I do it all again? Of course I would; I found out so much about my new family.”



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