Case put a face on child abuse
While every case of child abuse is shocking - no less so the death yesterday of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown of Brooklyn - few instances have drawn as much national attention to the disturbing phenomenon as the one discovered almost 20 years ago in a middle- class household in the heart of Greenwich Village.
At 6:35 a.m. on Nov. 2, 1987, two officers arrived at the apartment of then-attorney Joel Steinberg on West 14th Street in response to his companion's 911 call. "My daughter seems to have stopped breathing," Hedda Nussbaum, a writer and editor of children's books, had told the operator two minutes earlier.
What the responding officers saw would result in the arrest of Steinberg for conducting one of the most infamous and long-hidden cases of domestic and child abuse in New York City history.
On that autumn morning, the officers saw walls smeared with dirt and blood, the carpet soaked with urine and a chair overturned. A stash of cocaine was found in a desk drawer, and unused VCRs, TVs, car radios and tape decks were stacked everywhere.
A 16-month-old boy, the couple's illegally adopted son, was tied to a chair by a 4-foot length of rope. Nussbaum's face was a welter of crushed bones and black and blue.
The bespectacled Steinberg emerged from a bedroom carrying his illegally adopted daughter, 6-year-old Lisa, her body naked and bruised, saying she had fallen while roller skating. Lisa was taken to nearby St. Vincent's Medical Center, but could not be revived.
The notorious case drew hundreds of strangers to the girl's funeral. Steinberg spent 16 years in prison - two-thirds of his 25- year sentence for first-degree manslaughter. He was released in 2004 on parole to Fortune Academy, a Harlem halfway house. Now 65, his parole extends to 2012.
At 6:35 a.m. on Nov. 2, 1987, two officers arrived at the apartment of then-attorney Joel Steinberg on West 14th Street in response to his companion's 911 call. "My daughter seems to have stopped breathing," Hedda Nussbaum, a writer and editor of children's books, had told the operator two minutes earlier.
What the responding officers saw would result in the arrest of Steinberg for conducting one of the most infamous and long-hidden cases of domestic and child abuse in New York City history.
On that autumn morning, the officers saw walls smeared with dirt and blood, the carpet soaked with urine and a chair overturned. A stash of cocaine was found in a desk drawer, and unused VCRs, TVs, car radios and tape decks were stacked everywhere.
A 16-month-old boy, the couple's illegally adopted son, was tied to a chair by a 4-foot length of rope. Nussbaum's face was a welter of crushed bones and black and blue.
The bespectacled Steinberg emerged from a bedroom carrying his illegally adopted daughter, 6-year-old Lisa, her body naked and bruised, saying she had fallen while roller skating. Lisa was taken to nearby St. Vincent's Medical Center, but could not be revived.
The notorious case drew hundreds of strangers to the girl's funeral. Steinberg spent 16 years in prison - two-thirds of his 25- year sentence for first-degree manslaughter. He was released in 2004 on parole to Fortune Academy, a Harlem halfway house. Now 65, his parole extends to 2012.
