2nd Switched-at-Birth Case Found in Same Hospital

Two 41-year-old men in Manitoba, Canada, have been devastated to discover that they were raised by the wrong families after having been switched at birth by a hospital that mixed up at least two other babies the same year. Leon Swanson and David Tait Jr. were born three days apart in early 1975 at Norway House Indian Hospital in a remote northern community, the CBC reports. The two men, who know each other, had DNA tests and discovered the disturbing truth after Luke Monias and Norman Barkman—who were born at the hospital on the same day in June 1975—discovered last fall that they had been switched.

Both men wept at a press conference Friday. "Forty years gone," Tait said, per the National Post. "It's pretty tough. It hit me like a ton of bricks." The hospital in the indigenous community was federally run at the time, and officials have promised a third-party investigation to find out what went wrong—and whether any other babies were switched. "We can live with one mistake, but two mistakes of a similar nature is not acceptable," says Eric Robinson, Manitoba's former aboriginal affairs minister. "We can't slough it off as being a mistake. It was a criminal act." David Tait Sr. says the two families have talked and have decided to consider themselves one big family. (This Japanese man was 58 when he discovered he had been sent home with the wrong family.)