Swapped Kids Get Cash
Published: November 2, 2011 (Issue # 1681)
A maternity home Monday was ordered to pay 3 million rubles ($100,000) in compensation to two families whose babies it accidentally switched at birth.
The two families only found out recently through DNA tests that their 12-year-old daughters were switched by mistake after birth after the former husband of one of the mothers, Yulia Belyayeva, refused to support their daughter, Irina, because she did not look like him.
A DNA test revealed that neither of them were Irina’s biological parents. An official investigation tracked down her real parents and found Belyayeva’s child.
The parents laughed in joy and hugged each other in the footage from the courtroom in Kopeisk, Chelyabinsk region, after the judge delivered the verdict.
The girls don’t want to leave the parents who raised them, so the families are thinking about spending the compensation to get houses close to each other.