t’s Official: Madonna’s A Mama
Looks like Kabbalah just increased its devotees by one.
After a week of increasingly implausible denials and “no comments,” a Malawi high court judge has managed to do what Madonna would not: confirm that the singer and husband
Guy Ritchie have adopted a one-year-old son.
Unsurprisingly, Madonna’s camp has yet to comment on the adoption.
Guess we’ll just have to take the boy’s father, a Malawi village chief, the director of the orphanage, an African judge, a pastor and the secretary for the Ministry for Gender and Child Welfare’s words for it.
The Ritchies were granted custody of one-year-old David Banda Thursday, after filing adoption papers in Malawi’s Lilongwe High Court.
“Madonna and the husband”–nice–”filed their papers for an interim order this morning at Lilongwe High Court and the judge gave the ruling at 2 p.m. this afternoon,” deputy registrar Thomson Ligowe told Reuters.
Per Ligowe, the interim order means that, while the new parental units are free to take the boy home with them, they will be required to attend a subsequent hearing for the court to determine whether the adoption will be allowed to take place, judging by observations of the family by the country’s social workers.
“[Madonna] has been put on observer status to see how she will relate to the child, and people from social welfare will have to observe that,” Ligowe said. “The court will depend upon their observations to make a final decision.”
According to Malawian law, the hearing must take place within two years.
Yohane Banda, the boy’s father, said earlier this week that he was forced to send David to an orphanage after the boy’s mother died from fever and other complications just days after childbirth. He was present at the court this morning to see his son off and meet with the new parents for the first time.
“They are a lovely couple,” the 32-year-old man told reporters. “She asked me many questions. She and her husband seem happy with David. I am happy for him. Madonna promised me that as the child grows she will bring him back to visit.”
Disputing reports that the adoption process was given special priority–the normal length of the adoption process in the African country is 18 months–or that laws dictating that Malawi children not be adopted by foreigners were bent for the superstar couple, Kingston Kilimbe, the Director of Child Welfare Services, said that the Ritchies’ adoption was by the book.
“They have followed the normal processes,” he told reporters. “This has been going on for some time. Now is the completion point.”
The chief of Lipunga, the Malawi village where the boy is said to be from, seconded the remarks that the adoption process was set in motion long before the media caught wind of it.
Henderson Geza Dyedyereke told Reuters that he learned about the Material Woman’s plans to adopt back in August, from the director of the Home of Hope Orphan Care Center, Rev. Thompson Chipeta.
“Rev. Chipeta came yesterday to inform me about the child David Banda who is 12 months old,” he told the wire service. “The father told me that the child was going to America.”
The father confirmed as much yesterday, saying that his son had been adopted by a “famous U.S. musician,” though being careful not to name Madonna or Ritchie.
“I am very happy,” he said. “As you can see, there is poverty in my village. I know he will be very happy in America.”
While the adoption was apparently not made official until today, Britain’s Sun reported that Madonna and Ritchie picked David up from the Home of Hope Orphan Care Center on Monday night. They also claim that she had visited the orphanage twice before then since her arrival in Malawi last Wednesday.
The director of the center has refused to speak out on the adoption, though his son, Thompson Chipeta Jr., said that the “Hung Up” singer and her hubby chose David after the threesome bonded during an hourlong play session on one of her visits.
The boy marks the third child in the couple’s burgeoning brood, joining son Rocco, 5, and daughter Lourdes, 9, whom Madonna had with choreographer Carlos Leon.
The family has been on an orphanage-hopping tour of the African nation since last Wednesday, when Madonna and Co. touched down to tend to the singer’s Raising Malawi project, designed to clothe, feed and shelter more than 4,000
AIDS orphans.
