Madonna Still Missing Charity Millions, But Gets Mercy
Madonna has been allowed to adopt Malawi child Mercy James by that country’s highest court. This, despite a ruling from a lower court earlier this year that the adoption should not happen.
Earlier this year, the Malawai Human Rights Consultative Committee issued a strong statement against the Madonna-Mercy adoption.
It’s called “Redefining the Boundaries Between Child Adoption and Child Kidnapping.” You can read it http://www.hrccmalawi.org/madonnastatement.pdf
The statement is very specific:
“HRCC has all along, even before the adoption of the first child, David Banda by the
same pop star, been urging the government to speed up on its adoption policy so that
people like Madonna and others cannot use their financial power to override rules and
force the legitimization of child abuse. If this lacuna in policy and law is left unattended
for too long, more celebrities and other families will take our children away under the
guise of intercountry adoption, a development which may create loopholes and be
prone to child trafficking.
It is not only the material needs that matter for a normal upbringing of a child. Children
need to be taken care of within their communities and where their psychosocial needs
are satisfied. Mercy (Chifundo) James is a child who has her extended close family
members alive, and we urge Madonna to assist the child from right here and even
contribute to existing local capacities so that children are taken care of within Malawi.
HRCC shares sentiments by the British Charity Save the Children, which is of the view that the best place for a child is in his or her family in their community and just to remind that this is a position held in Guidelines for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (Malawi Government).”
In other words: Madonna has gotten her way, overturning a previous court decision and going against a country’s Human Rights counsel.
At the same time, the higher court has cited Madonna’s charity to Malawi. But they don’t underscore some very important points. For one, Madonna’s charity, Raising Malawi, as I’ve reported often, is simply a front for the Kabbalah Center of Los Angeles. Raising Malawi is using the Kabbalah Center’s Spirituality for Kids, or SFK, as a curriculum for Malawi orphans.
Second, there is still no official report about the money — said to be $3.7 million — collected from a February 6, 2008 fundraising event held by Raising Malawi, Gucci, and UNICEF. No report has ever been made about the collection or disbursement of these funds. Neither Raising Malawi nor the Gucci Foundation has filed a Form 990 tax report indicating what happened to the money. Maybe the high court of Malawi should be undertaking that investigation itself.
