Yahoo LifestyleFamilies discover 12-year-old daughters were switched at birth
Two Russian girls who found out they were accidentally switched at birth, have decided to stay with the families that raised them.
DNA tests revealed they had been sent home from the maternity hospital with the wrong parents 12 years ago.
Anya and Irina were born minutes apart in 1999 in the same ward and were accidentally given the wrong name tags.
They grew up within close distance of each other in the town of Kopeisk, eastern Russia, and were unaware of their true identities.
The case only came to light when Yuri Belyaeva, the ex-husband of Yuliya Belyaeva, refused to pay child support because his darker-skinned daughter, Irina, did not look like him.
The truth was revealed after two DNA tests showed that not only was he not biologically related to Irina, but neither was his ex-wife.
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Once the mix up was uncovered, the local police tracked down the couple’s real daughter, Anya, who had been raised by Irina’s biological parents across town.
Yuliya filed a formal complaint against the hospital and the families are now suing the hospital for £99,900 in damages.
Yuliya told BBC News: “It was true. Their daughter, Anya, was blonde and looked just like me and my ex-husband. And our daughter was dark-skinned and had dark hair and looked like the other father. He's a Tajik, and she looked just like him."
“Suddenly my whole world turned upside down and inside out,” she said, adding that: “As soon as I saw her, it was like looking at a copy of me as a child.”
The girls have been brought up with very different religious backgrounds and traditions. Despite this the two families, both of which have been through divorces, are now trying to bond.
“It's terrible for both of them,” Yuliya told the BBC. “They've grown up with one set of parents, now they've found out they have a different mother and father. Neither child wants to leave their home. Irina keeps saying to me: ‘Mum, please don't give me away’. I comfort her by saying: ‘I would never do anything against your wishes. Nothing has changed. I'm still your mother’.”
Anya and Irina have decided to remain with their non-biological parents as neither of them want to leave their family.
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