300 Mourn Abused Girl At Funeral

300 Mourn Abused Girl At Funeral

By JANE GROSS

LEAD: About 300 people, the vast majority of them strangers, came out to mourn the tangled life and brutal death of Lisa Steinberg yesterday as the 6-year-old was buried by relatives and clergymen who never knew her.

About 300 people, the vast majority of them strangers, came out to mourn the tangled life and brutal death of Lisa Steinberg yesterday as the 6-year-old was buried by relatives and clergymen who never knew her.

The day of grieving began at a wake and religious service at Redden's Funeral Home on West 14th Street in Manhattan, where the battered child's 4-foot-6-inch coffin was banked with gladiolas, Mass cards and handwritten messages of love and anger.

It ended at a windswept, snow-covered Westchester cemetery, where, because of a ruling by a surrogate, the child whose given name was Elizabeth was buried by her biological mother, Michelle Launders, who gave up the infant at birth for an adoption that was never completed. 'My Heart's Been Broke'

Overwhelmingly, the mourners were people who knew Lisa solely through the grisly news accounts of the last 10 days, through photographs of a sweet-faced little girl behind a desk in a first-grade classroom in Public School 41 or on a swing in Washington Square.

''My heart's been broke for a solid week,'' said Delores Roxbury, one of the first to enter the funeral parlor to view the closed coffin under an ivory crucifix.

The elderly woman had dressed for the occasion in her best blue coat, with a rhinestone pin on the lapel, and had ridden the subway from her home on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan.

''I didn't know her, but there was something about her face - so tiny,'' said Mrs. Roxbury, who wept. ''I can't see how a big man, with big hands, could have beaten her. If that was my grandson, I don't know what I would have done. I would have killed someone.''

At the service, conducted by a priest and rabbi, both clergymen took note of the pall that has been cast over the city by the dreadful circumstances of Lisa's life and death in the West 10th Street apartment of Joel B. Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum, the couple who raised her and have been charged in her death.

''There is a great sadness across the face of the city, and we fall silent because of it,'' said the Rev. Kevin O'Brien of St. James Roman Catholic Church near Chatham Square, who was assigned to officiate by the Archdiocese. ''We fall silent in the face of the pain and sorrow of Lisa, and the pain and sorrow of so many who didn't know her, but in the last few days reached out to her across the barrier of death.''

Father O'Brien noted that in a city ''where the very paving stones seem to cry out'' with suffering, citizens too often become ''inured to the pain of others.''

''Lisa's death can be a grace to us, if it makes us more sensitive to evil not only around us, but within us,'' he said.

Rabbi Dennis Math of the Village Temple at 33 East 12th Street attributed the outpouring of emotion to the special horror of child abuse. ''We want to believe this death is an isolated case, a freak of nature, and yet we know it is not,'' he said. ''We know to our sadness that parents do abuse and even kill their children - hundreds of them, even thousands, each year all over this land.''

Rabbi Math reached out particularly to ''the Jewish community of Greenwich Village,'' the neighbors and friends of Mr. Steinberg and Ms. Nussbaum, who have been examining whether they did enough to halt the violence that they suspected behind the closed door of apartment 3W. Risks vs. Privacy

The rabbi told them it was understandable not to invade the privacy of others and prayed for healing and self-forgiveness. But, he also issued a warning.

''We have learned in a tragic way,'' Rabbi Math said, ''that our respect for our neighbor's privacy is not as important as other considerations. We must risk being wrong, embarrassed or even evoking our neighbor's anger, if we fear a child is being harmed.''

The 15-minute graveside service at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne was attended solely by Miss Launders, her mother and a small group of relatives. The child was buried in a family plot alongside Ms. Launders's father and grandfather, and not far from such notables as William O'Dwyer, James Cagney, Jayne Mansfield and Babe Ruth.

By contrast, the wake and service in Manhattan were attended by several hundred people, a few of them neighbors and school officials from Greenwich Village, but most total strangers. Feelings and Questions

There was Lillian Love of Rosedale, Queens, who said she and her children had been battered and then struggled to obtain help from an unwieldy social welfare and judicial system.

''This thing opens a wound in me,'' she said. ''I had to give vent to my feelings. Women and children are totally at the mercy of these animals.''

There was Karen Howard, an East Sider with a 6-year-old daughter, who quivered at the notion that school officials had failed to recognize a child in such grave trouble. ''Where were the wonderful teachers?'' she asked. ''The wonderful guidance counselors? The mothers of the other first-grade children?''

There was John DeBernardi, with tattoos on his hands and patches that read ''Bring Home the M.I.A.'s'' on his black leather jacket. ''I would have brung him up on the roof and taken care of him,'' he said of Mr. Steinberg, who is alleged to have also beaten Ms. Nussbaum.

There was Margarita Ortiz, who described her feelings for Lisa in a mixture of Spanish and English. ''La nina, la nina, a little angel,'' she said. Visit From Cardinal

There were men in white butchers' coats from the meatpacking warehouses on the far West Side. And very old women, bundled in bulky coats and kerchiefs, who sat by the coffin and said ''Hail Marys.'' And countermen from a nearby delicatessen, who had sold lots of coffee, but wished there had not been cause for the extra business.

And there was John Cardinal O'Connor, who mounted the narrow stairs during the wake and kneeled before the bier. ''She will have a happy life now for all eternity,'' he said. ''That is what we pray for.''

The Cardinal was one of many mourners who paused to read the letters and admire the flowers that piled up around the coffin as morning turned to afternoon. Some had been brought by neighbors from 14 West 10th Street, where the stoop in recent days has come to resemble a shrine. Others were delivered by florists' vans. Most were for Lisa, but a few were marked for Ms. Launders, 26, a secretary from Long Island. A three-foot cascade of flowers came from the New York Rangers hockey team.

Clearly, the mourners had followed the twists of the legal wrangling this week, which ended with a court decision that Mr. Steinberg and Ms. Nussbaum had not adopted the child and that, therefore, Ms. Launders was entitled to bury her. In news accounts and conversations, the child has consistently been called either Elizabeth or Lisa Steinberg, but most of the Mass cards and floral tributes were addressed to Lisa Launders.

In addition to those who paid their respects inside the funeral parlor, there were scores more in the street.

One of them, Thomas Craig, broke from the crowd as the hearse pulled away, heading for the snowy cemetery. Mr. Craig rushed shouting into the traffic-choked street, his voice clear in the unusual midday silence.

''Bye Lisa,'' he called. ''Bye baby. Rest in peace.''