A Widening Pattern of Abuse Exemplified in Steinberg Case

A Widening Pattern of Abuse Exemplified in Steinberg Case

By STEVEN ERLANGER

LEAD: For more than a decade, friends and police investigators say, Joel B. Steinberg physically and emotionally abused his lover, Hedda Nussbaum. And in that time, they say, a woman who once was an intelligent and effective editor and author seemed to lose all self-respect and become unable to extricate or defend herself.

For more than a decade, friends and police investigators say, Joel B. Steinberg physically and emotionally abused his lover, Hedda Nussbaum. And in that time, they say, a woman who once was an intelligent and effective editor and author seemed to lose all self-respect and become unable to extricate or defend herself.

But only recently, authorities believe, did Mr. Steinberg's abuse of Ms. Nussbaum turn to violence against their 6-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. Last Monday, the girl was found near death in the family's Greenwich Village apartment, and in succeeding days, her death and the arrest of her adoptive parents for murder have underlined the widespread problems of wife and child abuse, and how closely connected they are. Child and Wife Abuse Linked

The Nussbaum-Steinberg relationship, experts said, fits a rough pattern of behavior characteristic among abusers and the abused, a pattern that crosses racial and socioeconomic lines.

According to Karla Digirolamo, executive director of New York State's Governor's Commission on Domestic Violence, ''We're finding more child abuse associated with wife abuse than before.'' The usual assumption, she said, has been that ''husband beats wife, wife beats kids, kids beat dog, but we're finding it much more common that the abuser in a family abuses everyone.''

Ms. Digirolamo and other experts, such as Dr. Penelope Grace, a specialist in family violence at the Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital in Boston, stress that the study and understanding of domestic violence are developing, but agree that child abuse is correlated with spouse abuse 30 percent to 40 percent of the time.

They also agree on a pattern of psychological behavior in abusive relationships that seems to fit much of what is known about the Steinberg case.

The experts speak of wife abuse as a complicated and cumulative cycle of tension, belittlement, violence, remorse and reconciliation that can lead to a paralysis of will and extinction of self-respect.

Sometimes known as ''the battered women's syndrome,'' the cycle depends, these experts say, on the usually deliberate undermining of a woman's sense of authority, independence and self-worth by a possessive, demanding and overly critical man who feels the need to control the behavior of all those around him.

The result can be a psychological trauma, says Courtney Esposito, a consultant to the Division on Women of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, that is not unlike that suffered by American prisoners of war in Vietnam or the American hostages in Iran. ''There is a sense of being trapped,'' said Ms. Esposito, who says she was a battered wife. ''You live in terror and your thinking is altered.''

''Battering is physically and psychologically cumulative,'' said Prudence Glass Greenblatt of the Battered Women's Defense Committee, which aided Karen Straw, recently acquitted in the murder of her husband. ''The memory of the violence and the threat of it happening again is as real as the event, and it's part of the control.'' Violence Denied or Minimized

''A woman feels loss of control and often a sense of responsibility for the violence,'' Ms. Digirolamo said. ''There is a cognitive dissonance between the reality of the violence and the usual periods of remorse from someone who is, after all, the partner in a love relationship.

''How do you assimilate that fact that the person who loves you is beating you? Or that the person you love is beating you, so that even your love is worth nothing?''

Ms. Digirolamo said that like Ms. Nussbaum, many women deny the violence or minimize it. ''They think, 'Well, if I behave, I can stop this, he'll stop beating me,' '' she said.

If a woman is beaten for being late with dinner, Ms. Greenblatt said, ''she'll get dinner ready on time but get beaten for something else.'' She said one woman recalled that just before she was beaten, her husband would say, ''You know, I feel sorry for you, you can't do anything right.'' Conditioned Helplessness

This sense of blame and responsibility is often reinforced, especially in traditional communities, the experts say, by clergymen, therapists or doctors. ''Even your mother will tell you it must be your own fault,'' Ms. Greenblatt said, ''and that you can't abandon the children.''

''There develops a conditioned helplessness,'' Ms. Digirolamo said, ''which is magnified by fear - some women believe they are safer at home where they know the danger'' than out in an unsupportive world where they may be pursued.

''Most men who are batterers don't just batter,'' Dr. Grace said. ''They isolate a woman, intimidate her in all areas. They destroy her self-confidence with great intentionality, so a paralysis develops.''

The presence of children in a relationship complicates it further, experts say. For some women, apparently as in the case of Ms. Nussbaum, the desire to protect the children will cause them to stay. For other women, the same desire will be the catalyst that finally emboldens them to leave or seek help. Societal Impediments

According to David Adams, a founder in 1977 of Emerge, which provides therapy to male batterers in Massachusetts: ''Often the battering man is not abusive to the kids, especially when they're young. But as they grow older, that can sometimes change.''

Larry Weinberg, an author who was close to Ms. Nussbaum, Mr. Steinberg and their daughter, said he believed this pattern fits the relationship he knew. Mr. Steinberg, who is a lawyer, saw Elizabeth ''as a complicit partner or ally against Hedda,'' Mr. Weinberg said.

He said he believed that Elizabeth became old enough ''to try to intervene and defend Hedda, and suddenly bore the brunt'' of Mr. Steinberg's rage. (The Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morganthau, is investigating whether Elizabeth was ever legally adopted by Mr. Steinberg and Ms. Nussbaum.) At the same time, the experts said, there are societal impediments to any woman leaving a relationship, let alone a woman who has undergone a long period of trauma and abuse. ''When a woman leaves, what protection does she have?'' Dr. Grace said. ''It would be nice if a woman walked out the door and it ended, when in fact it's just begun.''

When a woman leaves the home, Ms. Greenblatt said, ''she risks losing everything - her children, her house, her possessions, even grandmother's furniture.'' In custody battles, she said, courts often will reward children to battering fathers because of desertion if there is no formal evidence of child abuse, and in child-abuse cases, ''the woman stands charged too, with neglect and complicity, as Hedda Nussbaum is.''

Few women except the wealthy, the experts said, can afford to leave the home and live decently, yet to enter a battered women's shelter, a woman must be on welfare. According to Ms. Digirolamo, between 20 percent and 40 percent of homeless people in New York City are battered women.

According to recent studies cited by Ms. Esposito, 20 percent of women who enter hospital emergency rooms for injuries have been battered, as well as 45 percent of the mothers of abused or neglected children and 25 percent of women who commit suicide.

Dr. Ronald Chez of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey said there were 6 million battered women in America; other estimates range from 3 million to 12 million. Susan Schechter, author of ''Women and Male Violence,'' said there were 1.8 million battered married women in 1980, but said that figure did not include violence against single women or divorcees. ''There are teen-age date batterers, too,'' she said.

Edmund Stubbing, a New York City policeman for 18 years who now works with the Victims Services Agency, estimated that at least 350,000 calls a year to the city's emergency number, 911, concern domestic violence. In one Bronx precinct with a population of 120,000, he said, 15 percent of households called the police for help with domestic disputes, and over three years, 55 percent of those households called more than once.

To Mr. Stubbing and city police and court officials, there is a strong correlation between poverty and domestic violence, but many outside experts say wife and child abuse cut fairly evenly across racial and socioeconomic lines.

Those with money are better able to avoid public disclosure than the poor, these experts said, and can afford private treatment, housing, medical attention and legal advice.

''Everyone can believe that a poor, unemployed man beats his wife,'' Dr. Grace said. ''What's harder to believe is that the upper-class person, the White House staffer or the lawyer, does it, because there appears to be nothing wrong with them.''

Ms. Greenblatt, though acknowledging a greater societal sensitivity to the issues of domestic violence, said she believed that there remain ''significant religious, cultural and political supports'' for wife beating.

''It's like the 'rule of thumb' in British common law,'' she said. ''It meant a man could not beat his wife with a stick thicker than the width of his thumb. It is only comparatively recently that battering has been criminalized.''