Refugee fights for son she abandoned at birth in Wheaton
On June 12, 2009, a secretly pregnant Nunu Sung gave birth to a healthy boy behind a garage in Wheaton and then abandoned the child by a bush, his umbilical cord still attached.
This week, a DuPage County judge will begin hearing testimony to decide whether the imprisoned 27-year-old Burmese refugee will be allowed to raise the son she's fighting to take back.
Challenging Sung's fitness to be a mother is the boy's court-appointed guardian, who argues Sung abused and neglected the now-2-year-old from the moment he entered the world. Sung, meanwhile, contends she left the child because she was traumatized by her escape from a violent regime in her native land that shunned unwed mothers.
As many as 50 witnesses, including Sung, are expected to testify at the weeks-long trial in front of Judge C. Stanley Austin, who ultimately will decide whether mother and child are reunited.
The circumstances are unusual, a law professor said, because mothers who abandon a newborn are rarely identified, let alone granted custody after admitting guilt and serving prison time.
“The outcome depends on how much sympathy the prosecutor or judge has for her,” said Diane Kaplan, a professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago who is preparing a nationwide legal analysis of cases involving mothers who abandon or kill their infants. “It is reasonable that a judge will not want to create a precedent that encourages immigrants to come to the U.S. and abandon their newborns because of cultural stigmas from their home countries.”
A Wheaton man, Joe Logan, was retrieving his morning newspaper when he found Sung's child in his backyard about 7:45 a.m. The boy — later named Joshua by hospital staff — was naked, cold to the touch and covered in leaves and dirt, Logan told police at the time.
Sung, who had been reported missing six hours earlier after she failed to return to her cousin's nearby Crescent Street apartment from a walk, was arrested once police determined the child likely was hers, despite her initial denials. Authorities said she had become pregnant in Texas but hid it from relatives and received no prenatal care. The child's father expressed no interest in custody, they said.
In October 2010, Sung pleaded guilty to obstructing justice for lying to investigators about the birth. In exchange for prosecutors' promise that they would not seek to revoke her parental rights, she agreed to the maximum sentence of three years in prison. Prosecutors also dismissed misdemeanor charges of endangering the life or health of a child in return for her admission of guilt.
“Her number one priority was whatever she could do to make sure they were together,” said West Chicago attorney Jennifer Wiesner, who represents Sung with Glen Ellyn attorney Terra Howard.
Wiesner said Sung took state-sanctioned classes on parenting and English and had regular supervised visits with her son until she was imprisoned late last year. It wasn't until May that the child's court-appointed guardian filed a petition seeking to revoke her parental rights.
According to the petition filed by Aurora attorney and guardian Kathleen Anderson, Sung “has continuously engaged in substantial neglect of the minor ... having given birth to the baby, she thereafter abandoned the newborn out of doors and partially covered with leaves and without protection from the cold and elements.”
The petition further alleges Sung “failed to demonstrate a reasonable degree of interest, concern or responsibility as to the welfare of a newborn child during the first 30 days after its birth,” and continuously failed to support the child financially.
Neither Anderson nor Charles Rohde, an Addison attorney for a Wheaton family currently caring for the boy, would comment. DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin has said his office is under court order to prosecute Anderson's petition and has no choice but to do so, despite the plea agreement.
“The law allows the court to order us to prosecute a petition against our wishes if the court finds it's in the best interest of the minor, which is what happened here,” Berlin said in August. “We didn't file this petition, but we are certainly going to follow a judge's orders.”
The trial on Sung's parental rights will unfold in one or two phases. In the first phase, Austin will decide whether Sung is fit to be a parent. If she's found fit, the state would begin transferring custody of the child to Sung upon her expected parole from prison in January. If she's found unfit, the proceedings continue to a second phase in which Austin would decide whether to revoke her parental rights entirely.
Under Illinois law, parents can be found unfit based on dozens of factors, from abuse and neglect to child abandonment.
Much of the testimony is expected to center on Sung's effort — or lack thereof — to care for her son.
Among those expected to testify for the defense is Edwina Kametas of Oak Lawn, an immigrant from Burma, also known as Myanmar, who at one time served as Sung's interpreter and witnessed several meetings between Sung and Joshua.
Kametas said Sung always looked forward to seeing her son, often staying up the night before to prepare traditional Burmese rice porridge for him. She also presented him with a “huge” cake on his first birthday and spent what little money she had on clothes, diapers and other supplies, Kametas said.
“Her son was her priority, her son was her life,” she said. Now, “she's brokenhearted. She made a mistake because she was terrified and had nobody to turn to. But she regrets every day for her actions.”
Sung's attorneys declined to make her available for an interview because Austin advised her not to speak about the case outside court. But according to Wiesner, the refugee's escape from Burma was nothing short of traumatic, with Sung hiding in ceiling tiles in Malaysian factories and in docked boats as she made her way to the U.S.
Wiesner said Sung concealed her pregnancy because she would have been shunned in her home country.
“Some women (there) are stoned publicly,” Wiesner said.
Yvette Kyaw, a Burmese refugee and interpreter for the nonprofit RefugeeOne in Chicago, confirmed unwed mothers face intense scrutiny in Burma and can even be cast out from their own villages. It's also possible Sung was unaware of procedures in the U.S. to legally abandon a child, she said.
“In Burma, if you're pregnant and don't have a husband, the people will talk about you. And sometimes — it depends on what tribe you are from and in which part of Burma you live — they can kick you out of a village … because you let your family and village down,” Kyaw said. “Whoever has a baby is supposed to have a husband, a father.”
Kaplan, the law professor, said data from the last six years appear to dispel a widely held perception that most mothers who abandon their children are teenagers. In reality, she said, they're immigrants.
“Immigrants have a lot to be afraid of and lack knowledge about social resources such as Safe Haven laws, adoption, (Department of Children and Family Services) home support services, free medical clinics, etc.,” she said. “This abandonment, however, was premeditated. Despite the moral complexities raised by this case, in a courtroom the question of whether shame of nonmarital parenting is a defense ... is a legal, not a moral, question.”
Whatever the outcome, Wiesner said, Sung is prepared to fight for her child all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. She said her client wouldn't have pleaded guilty — “not in a million years” — if she knew it would one day prevent her from being with Joshua.
“We have exercised every attempt to have this stopped because it's barred by a constitutionally protected plea agreement,” she said. “The integrity of all plea agreements throughout the state of Illinois are affected by this case. And the longer this case is in the system, the older this child gets. The true victim of all this is the child.”
Sung's trial is scheduled to open Tuesday.