Mom sent to prison for abandoning newborn now wants boy back

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Nunu Sung

Updated: January 4, 2012 8:05AM

Still serving a prison term for abandoning her newborn son, Nunu Sung insisted Friday she wanted to retrieve the baby after secretly giving birth to him in 2009 outside her Wheaton apartment.

Sung, a 27-year-old refugee from Myanmar, testified she was too exhausted to go back to the find the baby after leaving him under bushes near her apartment complex.

“Did you plan to go back for your son?” asked her attorney, Terra Costa Howard.

“Yes, always,” Sung replied softly.

Her often tearful testimony came during an unusual DuPage County court hearing in which she is attempting to retain her parental rights to her now 2 1/2-year-old son, who is being raised by a suburban foster family.

Sung--scheduled to be paroled early next year--ultimately wants to regain custody of the boy, her attorneys say.

The baby’s court-appointed guardian filed a petition earlier this year seeking to sever Sung’s parental rights, arguing she has no legal claim to an infant she treated cruelly, then abandoned.

After his traumatic birth early on June 12, 2009, the baby spent at least 1 1/2 hours lying on the ground in 50-degree temperatures before being discovered by a neighbor and his dog.

The child--named Joshua by medical workers who cared for him--spent 12 days in the hospital being treated for a low body temperature and seizure problems stemming from his birth, prosecutors and other attorneys on the case have said.

“The mother is a victimizer. She’s a cunning woman who knows how to play a really good game,” said attorney Kathleen Anderson, who represents the child. “I can’t think of anything more cruel than what she did to a newborn infant.”

Anderson argued that Sung sought no pre-natal medical care, bought no clothes or even diapers and had made no plans to care for her newborn. Sung, though, already had an airline ticket to return to Texas, where she had been living before moving to Wheaton to stay with a cousin after becoming pregnant, Anderson said.

Sung’s attorneys have said she desperately wants to raise the child she abandoned because she was desperate and frightened. Sung fled her Asian homeland when she was 18 years old and was living in Texas in 2008 when she became pregnant, then was abandoned by the baby’s father, her attorneys have said.

Speaking through an interpreter, Sung haltingly explained that she hid her pregnancy and delivered the baby alone because in her homeland unwed mothers are scorned.

“It is very shameful to be pregnant without a husband,” Sung said.

Sung pleaded guilty to lying to police about abandoning the baby and agreed to serve the maximum three-year prison term only because prosecutors agreed not to seek to terminate her parental rights, Howard said.

Despite that agreement, DuPage County prosecutors now are trying to end her parental rights--a step they say they are required to take because of the legal action filed by the baby’s guardian.

During her testimony, Sung broke down sobbing when asked about photos showing blood stains on the ground and wall of the garage where the infant was born.

“There was a lot of blood that came out,” Sung said softly.

After her son was born, Sung said she picked him up and “tried to take the baby to a safer place.”

But questioned by prosecutors, Sung acknowledged she simply moved him to a nearby area and left him on the ground.

Sung said she left the baby and went back to her apartment to clean herself, then planned to go back for the baby.

Instead, she said she fell asleep on the floor because she was exhausted.

The hearing is expected to continue into January.