A SCOTTISH mother who has battled for 18 months to adopt a teenage girl from Malawi claims that her case has been speeded up because it is being taken on by a lawyer who acted for Madonna.

Joyce Dean, from Banff, said she had been in contact with Alan Chinula and told by officials in Malawi’s social welfare department that “we are going to do a Madonna”.

She hopes that Caroline, the girl she wants to adopt, will be in Britain within weeks because of Chinula’s intervention. “Madonna’s lawyer is going to help us,” said Dean, a 58-year-old widow. “We have been told he can make it happen, that he has the key.”

Chinula said he was flattered by Dean’s faith in him and would take up the case this week. “I will be meeting the people at the social welfare department in Lilongwe tomorrow, when I will look at the papers,” he said.

Last month Chinula guided papers through the Malawian courts which enabled Madonna and Guy Ritchie, her husband, to adopt 13-month-old David Banda. The legal process was completed in just two weeks, infuriating some who believe that the rules were waived to help a celebrity mother.

Dean, who now lives in York, admitted that she, too, had been upset that the singer had apparently been able to short circuit a system which had proved intractable in the case of Caroline.

At the end of last month she contacted Liz Rosenberg, Madonna’s US publicist. The singer later said in a television interview that she would like to assist Dean and others like her.

Chinula said that he had not been instructed by Madonna’s representatives to take up Dean’s case.

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