"I was never told that adoption means that David will no longer be my son - if I was told this, I would not have allowed the adoption." However, he later told Time magazine he did not want to challenge the adoption. "I don't want my child, who is already gone, to come back.
I will be killing his future," he was quoted as saying. He has now told the BBC he wants rights groups to leave the child alone, for fear that they may anger Madonna and prompt her to return the child. Madonna has meanwhile said she is "disappointed" by media coverage of her bid to adopt the baby, saying it will discourage others from doing the same.
"The media is doing a great disservice to all the orphans of Africa by turning it into such a negative thing," she said on Oprah Winfrey's chat show. Interviewed via satellite from the UK, she said that she first spotted David in a documentary she is financing about Malawian orphans. "I became transfixed by him," she said.
"But I didn't yet know I was going to adopt him. I was just drawn to him." When she subsequently met the child at a Malawi orphanage, she was told he had survived malaria and tuberculosis but still had severe pneumonia.
"I was in a state of panic, because I didn't want to leave him in the orphanage because I knew they didn't have medication to take care of him," Madonna said. She told Winfrey that she gained permission to take the baby to a clinic, where he was given antibiotics. "I think if everybody went there, they'd want to bring one of those children home with them and give them a better life.
" The pop star funds six orphanages through her Raising Malawi charity and is setting up an orphanage for 4,000 children in a village outside the capital, Lilongwe.
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