Most adoptions start with a little light kidnapping

We first heard the news that David, the poor kid which has been selected as Madonna's post-tour project, had been lifted in an email from regular correspondent Karl T:

Funny that. I seem to recall there being a little bit more, well, process involved when my parents adopted my brother. Then again, he was from Long Eaton.

Sadly, Long Eaton babies aren't quite as photogenic.

It does, indeed, seem that David has left Malawi, although it's far from clear that he was supposed to have gone.

The human rights charities had postponed a legal challenge to the adoption while it "collected evidence." Meanwhile, the Malawian authorities are attempting to correct the impression that it rolled over and gave the rich woman whatever she asked for:

Penston Kilembe, director of child welfare in the ministry of gender, Child Welfare and Community Services, said Madonna and her husband had broken no laws.

"The process did not start today - Madonna's people have been pushing the papers for some time and her coming was just to sign the papers to conclude the process," he said.

Really? Malawian law appears to insist that adopters live in the country for 18 months, and while it's possible that Madonna has been sending people over for a year and a half, her tendency to attract attention to herself and the whole international tour thing makes it seem far from likely Madonna and Guy have been living in Malawi for that long quietly; the reports of Madonna's people driving round looking for children and the fact that David can't have been in the orphanage for more than two months suggests that there's not been any period of investigation to see how adopted parents and child get on.

And while Madonna may have had permission to take David away from his home, surely the responsible thing would have been to wait to see if the legal challenge failed? If you're that sure of the rightness of your actions, and that you will spend the next twenty years caring for the child, why not wait a few more days to convince the world?

A statement from Liz Rosenberg, Madonna's publicist in New York, said the child was issued a passport and a visa Monday.

"It is expected that the family will be reunited within the next few days," the statement said.

Rosenberg said Madonna and her husband, filmmaker Guy Ritchie, were granted interim adoption of the child, who was granted a visa that allows him to travel with them.

"This interim adoption grants David's new parents temporary custody for 18 months, during which time they will be evaluated by the courts of Malawi per the tribal customs of the country," she said in her statement said. "It is expected that the family will be reunited in the next few days."

The child was accompanied out of Malawi by one of the singer's bodyguards, a witness told Reuters news agency, and is believed to be en route to South Africa.

So Madonna couldn't even be bothered to wait to take what by now will likely be a confused and frightened kid on the longest trip of his short life, instead thrusting this supposed wanted child into the care of some paid retainer. Cynics might say that's starting as you mean to go on.

And what will happen in 18 months? Even if Malawian officials concede they've made a terrible mistake, it's going to be very, very hard to put it right - allowing a child from Malawi to Hampstead is one thing; letting him come to feel that Hampstead is his home and then returning him to a small African village quite another.

So, instead of waiting a few days to think seriously about the options, the Malawian authorities have collaborated in a grotesque fait accompli, in which nobody comes out well. Madonna looks desperate and grabby, treating a child like an eBay product, swooping in to ensure nobody else can get it. Malawi looks like a nation which is happy to collude in deals which treat its citizens as chattels. And David? He's probably just lucky he's too young to understand that what's best for him matters less than keeping some rich woman happy and providing a cutesy ending for a self-aggrandising film about how great she is.

If Madonna really cared about the kid, if she was interested in the person rather than the statement, why wasn't she prepared to invest the time in the adoption that the law demanded?

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