Judge rules Wheaton mother who abandoned newborn unfit to raise him

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Nunu Sung

Updated: February 19, 2012 8:16AM

A refugee who left her newborn son “naked, alone and wet” on the ground outside her Wheaton apartment is unfit to raise the now 21/2-year-old boy, a DuPage County judge ruled Tuesday.

Issuing his decision in the unusual and long-running child custody case, Judge Robert Anderson said he didn’t believe 27-year-old Nunu Sung when she testified she planned to return for the baby she secretly delivered in 2009 and then abandoned under bushes near her home.

“She left her newborn infant naked, alone and wet in a hidden place,” Anderson said. “She didn’t do anything to protect her child.”

Sung, a refugee from Myanmar who has nearly completed the prison term imposed for abandoning the baby, wiped tears from her eyes as Anderson announced his decision.

But his ruling doesn’t permanently sever Sung’s parental rights to the boy she delivered by herself outside her apartment on June 12, 2009. Anderson will rule on that issue following a separate hearing beginning later this week.

Her attorneys, though, called it “highly unlikely” that she would retain her legal rights to the boy since Anderson already has found she is unfit to parent the child.

But they promised an immediate appeal if her rights are severed, arguing a plea agreement Sung reached with prosecutors on the criminal charges filed in the case bars them from moving to legally cut her ties to the baby.

“This case never should have been taken to trial in the first place,” said attorney Jennifer Wiesner.

The baby’s court-appointed guardian filed a petition last year seeking to sever Sung’s parental rights.

The baby spent at least 11/2 hours lying on the ground in 50-degree temperatures before being discovered by a neighbor and his dog.

Sung pleaded guilty in 2010 to lying to police investigating the case in a plea agreement that called for her to serve the maximum three-year prison term but also banned prosecutors from moving to end her parental rights to the boy.