But the news that ? after a week of visiting child-care charities, including one she funds to help AIDS orphans ? she's taking a Malawi infant home with her, has stirred controversy and not a little criticism, CBS News correspondent Richard Roth in London reports.
Madonna and her husband, Guy Ritchie, took custody of the year-old boy named David Banda after a court gave approval, waiving or bending rules that bar foreign adoptions, and usually require an 18-month waiting period. Though the infant was in an orphanage, he wasn't an orphan. His mother had died after childbirth.
His father and grandmother couldn't afford to raise him. The father says he'd never heard of Madonna but learned she was, as he put it, a respectable American lady?and he's happy with the adoption happening.
But there's official silence on whether Madonna's money and fame made the quick adoption possible, and a local child advocacy group is publicly questioning if foreign adoptions should be allowed at all. The singer's not commenting. The boy's father says Madonna has promised his son will come back to visit Malawi as he grows up.
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