Irina was informed that her twins had passed away, but later found out it was all a set-up.

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Irina always thought that the suitcase buried underneath a tree in her backyard contained the remains of her twin sons who had died shortly after birth, in 1978.

“When I gave birth, the doctor said to me: ‘Do you have the means to raise these children?” she recalled decades later.

Three days after they were born, Irina was told the babies didn’t survive. As instructed by the doctors, her husband brought a cloth and a suitcase to bury them in.

Since they couldn’t find a cemetery plot, they buried the suitcase in their garden, unopened.

For more than 40 years, the suitcase and its contents laid untouched, until Irina’s daughter Nino came across a Facebook group filled with stories of children searching for parents and parents searching for children.

Black-market adoptions and child trafficking had thrived in Georgia for decades from the Soviet era in the 1970s until the mid-2000s, when tougher laws were introduced.

Experts who have spoken to those affected by the scandal said a culture of shame surrounding adoption was one of the reasons the practice lasted so long underground.

Others believed high-level government officials were complicit and some of those involved might still be working in Georgian hospitals today.

“I read a few [Facebook] posts and then I couldn’t read any more,” Nino said.

Parents said in the posts they had been told their children had died but never saw the bodies — something that sounded familiar to Nino.

She asked her sister Nana: “Did our brothers really die?”

The family grew suspicious of the twins’ fate and decided to dig up the suitcase in the backyard.

An old suitcase, covered in soil, lies on green grass in a garden with a shovel resting beside it.

For more than 40 years, a suitcase was buried in Irina’s garden believed to contain her twin sons’ remains. Source: BBC

Inside, they found a couple of twigs, which the police later said were from a grape vine.

“We were completely shocked,” Nino said. “There’s nothing inside. They’re probably alive.”

Searching for answers

In 2016, Georgian journalist Tamuna Museridze was cleaning out her mother’s house after she unexpectedly died. She found a birth certificate with her name but with a different birthdate.

In Georgia, every woman receives an official document after giving birth. But when Museridze went to the archives, she found no such document existed for her mother.

She concluded that her mother didn’t give birth to her, so she must have been adopted. When her family refused to talk about it, Museridze set out to find answers.

She and her friend set up a Facebook group called “I’m searching”. It quickly exploded. In post after post, people shared how they too, were looking for their biological parents and siblings.

Museridze’s research found that the trafficking of babies was happening in at least 20 hospitals across Georgia. Many were in rural areas, like Kvareli, a small town in east Georgia, where Irina and her family lived.

A woman with long wavy dark hair wearing red lipstick

Georgian journalist Tamuna Museridze accidentally found out she wasn’t her mother’s biological child. When she set out to find answers, she uncovered an old illegal adoption scheme that had thrived across Georgia. Source: BBC

The total number of victims of the scheme is unknown but Museridze estimates it may have affected tens of thousands of people. Not only were parents separated from children, twins were also broken up.

A culture of shame

Human rights lawyer Lia Mukhashavria believed the practice thrived because of a culture of shame around adoption and a lack of questioning of authority under communism, which pushed it underground.

The practice continued after Georgia gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Instability in the country helped the criminals to get away with profiteering off a more organised system of illegal adoption.

“One thing I can say with certainty is that this illegal adoption was systemic, and it operated and existed all over the country,” Mukhashavria said.

She said, in some cases, biological mothers voluntarily gave up their children, either for money or for other reasons.

“The second is a larger group, in my opinion, of tragic stories, where a mother was deceived in the maternity hospital. She was told her baby had died, and that the child was buried in the hospital cemetery.”

It is now known that no cemeteries existed.

A middle-aged woman with short dark blonde hair wearing a burgundy shirt looks straight into the camera

Human rights lawyer Lia Mukhashavria believes that a culture of shame around adoption pushed it underground. Source: BBC

Push for accountability

International child trafficking has been investigated by the Georgian government twice since 2003. Some people did face jail time. There are reports that some of those who were accused of being involved are still working in Georgian hospitals.

With Museridze’s group – which has more than 230,000 members – gaining momentum, in September 2022 the Georgian government launched a new formal investigation into child trafficking.

The Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs said “forty people have been interviewed as witnesses” as part of its current investigation but “no person has been identified as committing a crime” and “criminal prosecution has not been initiated”. 

Museridze, human rights lawyer Mukhashavria and several other women from the group are looking to launch a legal action for the victims.

Three women sit at a table with a plate of apples and lollies, having a conversation. The woman on the left is wearing a white hat with a black ribbon, a middle-aged woman is in the middle, and an elderly woman with gray hair is on the right.

It was Tamuna’s (left) Facebook group that raised Irina and Nino’s suspicions about her brothers’ fate. When the family dug out an old suitcase they were believed to have been buried in, they found no remains inside. Source: BBC

Meanwhile, people like Irina and Nino are left with more questions than answers.

Museridze was also still searching.

“The saddest part of my story is that I have reunited hundreds of families, and I cannot find my biological parents,” she said.

By the end of 2024, she found her biological parents. She was told that she wasn’t a stolen baby. Her mother had given her up for adoption.

Watch more of Dateline’s coverage from Georgia.