Girls Switched at Birth in 1999 Want to Remain With 'Wrong' Mothers
Two 12-year-old girls from the Ural Mountains of eastern Russia, who had been switched at birth, have decided to remain with the mothers who raised them instead of living with their natural parents.
As was reported by ABC’s “Good Morning America," the girls, who grew up a short distance from each other, had their fate determined when they were given the wrong name tags in a maternity ward, after being born within 15 minutes of each other in 1999.
The error was discovered due to a conflict over child support. Apparently, the ex-husband of one of the mothers, Yuliya Belyaeva, refused to provide child support due to a lack of resemblance between him and Irina, the little girl that was purported to be his daughter.
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A DNA test was conducted and it was soon discovered that the child was not related to either parents.
Stunned by the revelation, Belyaeva soon started out to find her own daughter. She was aided by her memory which brought her back to the maternity ward and the woman who was in labor the very same day she also gave birth.
Belyaeva decided to take the results of the DNA test to prosecutors, where she filed a complaint against the hospital for giving her the wrong child. The distraught mother then took her search to the police who were able to find her biological daughter, just a few miles away, being raised by the parents of Irina’s.
It was there while staring at the little girl, when Belyaeva began to remember the little girl in the few minutes after giving birth. The daughter, Anya, shred similar traits. She was blonde and looked just like Belyaeva and her father, while Irina shared the features of the other parents.
Belyaeva became even more convinced that she had stumbled onto a very unique situation. She suddenly had to live with the reality that while the girls were happy to have been reunited with their respective families, neither wanted to leave the families they grew up with.
Accordingly, the families are suing the hospital and are demanding almost $160,000 in damages.
