October 26, 2006

Madonna Tells Oprah Media Has Spun False Story Over Adoption

By Jennifer Vineyard (MTV.com)

Madonna is no stranger to controversy, but even she didn't anticipate the uproar caused by her adoption of an African baby, the singer revealed in a hastily arranged interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show, airing Wednesday (October 25). Addressing her critics head-on, Madonna defended her decision to adopt a child as completely altruistic, saying she hoped her experience would not deter others who might want to do the same thing.

"I didn't realize that the adoption was causing any controversy until I came back [to England]," Madonna said in her first televised interview since the adoption. "There were a million crews in the airport and press camped outside my door. ... It's pretty shocking."

Madonna said she and her husband, Guy Ritchie, decided to adopt a child two years ago but didn't know from where at first. (The couple currently raise their 6-year-old son, Rocco, and Madonna's 10-year-old daughter, Lourdes). But once Madonna started her charity mission in Malawi -- Raising Malawi -- to build an orphan care and education center, she began to view photographs and footage of the children who might benefit from the project and so discovered a 13-month-old boy named David.

"An 8-year-old girl who is living with HIV was holding this child," Madonna said. "I became transfixed by him. ... But I didn't yet know I was going to adopt him. I was just drawn to him."

After the death of his mother, David had been placed in an orphanage since his father had no means to take care of him. Madonna brought a pediatrician to the orphanage to test the children's health, and discovered that David had "severe pneumonia" and "could hardly breathe." "I didn't want to leave him in the orphanage because I knew they didn't have the medication to take care of him," Madonna said. "We got permission to take him to a clinic to have a bronchial dilator put on him. ... He was given an injection of antibiotics. He's still a little bit ill, not completely free of his pneumonia, but he's much better than he was when we found him."

Madonna said she didn't know anything about David's parents at first. Later she was told that his mother had died of HIV/AIDS and his three siblings were also dead. Madonna said she was told by the Ministry of Gender, Child Welfare and Community Services that the whereabouts of David's biological father, Yohane Banda, were unknown, but that he would have to give consent before the adoption could take place. "Here's what I knew," Madonna said. "David had been living in this orphanage since he was 2 weeks old. He had survived malaria and tuberculosis, and no one from his extended family had visited him since the time he arrived. So from my perspective, there was no one looking after David's welfare."

Madonna said that after David's father was found, he told her that he had given his son up, hoping someone would give him a better life, and agreed to the adoption. But David's father has since changed his story and has told reporters he didn't understand that the adoption would be permanent, not temporary. Madonna said she does not believe he truly changed his mind, but believes instead that he has been manipulated by the media. "I sat in that room. I looked in that man's eyes," Madonna said. "They have asked him things, repeatedly, and they have put words in his mouth. They have spun a story that is completely false."

Critics have accused Madonna of bending the rules -- or even breaking the law outright -- to fast-track the adoption, using her money and celebrity as leverage. But Madonna insisted that her status did not help to speed up the process.

"I assure you, it doesn't matter who you are or how much money you have, nothing goes fast in Africa," Madonna said. "There are no adoption laws in Malawi. And I was warned by my social worker that because there were no known laws in Malawi, they were more or less going to have to make them up as we went along. And she did say to me, 'Pick Ethiopia. Go to Kenya. Don't go to Malawi because you're just going to get a hard time.' "

Malawi officials might disagree with Madonna's assessment of the country's laws -- there is a process in place that had been waived on Madonna's account. Madonna and her husband were granted an "interim adoption" by the Malawian government, which means David will live in their care for 18 months while a social worker visits them periodically on the child's behalf. After the assessment period the Ritchies may then legally adopt David.

Madonna said she's encouraged that her children, Lourdes and Rocco, have already accepted David into their family without asking questions about the difference in his skin color. "That is an amazing lesson that children do teach us," she said. But Madonna is equally disappointed that the rest of the world has responded with skepticism and criticism.

"I'm disappointed because it discourages other people from doing the same thing," Madonna said, "for anybody who had the idea that they too would like to open their house and give a life to a child living in an orphanage who might possibly not live past the age of 5. ... I feel like the media is doing a great disservice to all the orphans of Africa, period, not just Malawi, by turning it into such a negative thing."

"I beg all of those people to go to Africa and see what I saw and walk through those villages," she said. "To see 8-year-olds in charge of households. To see mothers dying with Kaposi's sarcoma lesions all over their bodies. To see open [sewers] everywhere. It is a state of emergency. As far as I'm concerned the adoption laws have to be changed to suit that state of emergency. I think if everybody went there, they'd want to bring one of those children home with them and give them a better life."