Pop star Madonna, speaking publicly for the first time about her adoption of a Malawian boy, said she was disappointed by the adopting children in Africa.
In an interview with talk show host Oprah Winfrey, to be aired on Wednesday, Madonna said she was drawn to one-year-old David when living with HIV/AIDS.
going to adopt him," she told Winfrey, according to extracts from the interview issued on the TV host's website.
The American singer said she and her husband, British film director Guy Ritchie, has planned to adopt two years ago, without knowing where. She said it was her charity work in Malawi, a central African country that has been hard hit by AIDS, that brought them to David.
children, although his father was alive.
died of AIDS.
"From my perspective, there was no one looking after David's welfare," she tells Winfrey.
government and final approval is expected in 18 months.
home in London with her other two children, daughter Lourdes, 10, and son Rocco, 6.
But the adoption plans sparked controversy.
Malawian child rights groups, accusing the government of non-resident, are challenging the process in court.
Critics of the process.
The child's father, Yohane Banda, said at the weekend he never intended his son to be adopted.
could hardly breathe.
She did not want to leave him in the orphanage, which did not have medicines to treat him.
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," she said.
father to say he did not know what he had agreed to.
"I do not believe that is true. I sat in that room, I looked into that man's eyes," Madonna said.
"I believe, at this point in time, he's been terrorised by the media."
She said she was disappointed by the media controversy.
the same thing - for anybody who had the idea that they, too, would orphanage who might possibly not live past the age of 5," she said.
orphans of Africa, period, not just Malawi, by turning it into such a negative thing."
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