Witness: Mom asked for baby back after abandoning him

Two child welfare workers testified Thursday about a Burmese refugee's attempts to reclaim her newborn son after she abandoned him under a bush in Wheaton.

Nunu Sung first asked for the boy on June 12, 2009, the same day she delivered him near a row of garages behind her cousin's apartment. Two months later, after the first request was denied, she sought daily visits instead, according to testimony.

Sung eventually received supervised weekly contact, allowing her to feed the boy, change his diaper, and develop other parenting skills outlined by child welfare authorities. She never missed a visit and always appeared eager to care for him, case worker Jennifer Blandford testified under cross-examination.

“She did everything she was capable of doing, isn't that correct?” Sung attorney Jennifer Wiesner asked.

“Yes,” Blandford responded.

Sung, 27, has called her abandonment of the boy a “mistake” and is now fighting in court to be reunited with him after her release from prison next month.

DuPage County Judge Robert Anderson will decide if she's a fit mother and, if not, whether her parental rights should be revoked.

Denice Plump, a child protection investigator for the Department of Children and Family Services, said she interviewed Sung just hours after a neighbor found the child in his yard. She said Sung told her she “had no other plans for the baby” at the time she left him.

“She did ask for the baby to be returned to her care,” Plump testified.

Plump said Sung's cousin agreed to care for the boy, but it wasn't an option because Sung still technically lived in the household, even though she was in jail. The child was then placed with a Wheaton couple who agreed to adopt him if Sung did not make adequate progress to be reunited.

Blandford said Sung went on to receive an unsatisfactory rating by child welfare officials because she didn't complete a required mental evaluation or mandatory counseling. Under cross-examination, however, Blandford acknowledged those services were not referred to Sung, partly because of language barrier in her native Hakha Chin dialect.

The trial, expected to run into January, resumes today.