Metro Matters; Long After Lisa, Tragedy of Abuse Can Still Happen
Metro Matters; Long After Lisa, Tragedy of Abuse Can Still Happen
By SAM ROBERTS
LEAD: Nearly 100 days ago, Lisa Steinberg was fatally beaten in her family's Greenwich Village apartment. Not only could it happen again to someone else, it has.
Nearly 100 days ago, Lisa Steinberg was fatally beaten in her family's Greenwich Village apartment. Not only could it happen again to someone else, it has.
''Everybody was saying, 'How could this happen in New York in 1987?' '' said Andrew J. Stein, the City Council President. ''Unfortunately, after the headlines died down, we're really not much closer to knowing what happened or how to prevent it. This was a white middle-class kid, but every week in this city two mostly black or Hispanic kids die the same way.''
In 1987, 108 children were reported to have died of abuse or neglect in New York City, down from 113 in 1986. In families that were known to the city's child abuse agency, 45 children died last year of all causes, up from 42 the year before.
The number, driven higher by the drug epidemic, has been seemingly resistant to the best efforts of the bureaucracy. Indeed, what made the Steinberg case even more disturbing was the perception that the system, for the most part, had worked.
Still, a 6-year-old was killed. The couple who had been raising her, Joel Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum, were charged with murder.
Dr. Vincent I. Fontana, chairman of the Mayor's Task Force on Child Abuse and Neglect, said, ''If there's a system in place and we're still losing an average of two children a week despite our best efforts, then we have to take a better look at the system.''
Lisa Steinberg's death galvanized advocates for children and brought the tragedy of child abuse home - and, for the first time, to many middle-class homes. Earlier last fall, complaints to the state's child abuse hot-line (1-800-342-3720) averaged fewer than 900 a day. After Lisa's death, the calls peaked at about 2,000 daily and even now, three months later, are averaging more than 1,000 a day.
Skeptics wonder whether a system that has lurched from one well-intentioned reform to another, that has been studied to excess and then treated with indifference can cope.
At Mayor Koch's request, Dr. Fontana's task force is studying how the system can better coordinate complaints of spouse and child abuse (Hedda Nussbaum had been described as a battered wife). In response to Dr. Fontana's report last spring, the Mayor reconvened another task force to improve communications between various departments, including the police, social service agencies, and the Board of Education.
Just before its own investigators criticized the school system's response to Lisa Steinberg's plight, the school board proposed to broaden training for teachers and other personnel, augmented by four or five additional guidance counselors.
A group of judges is seeking to amend a state law that was last revised to protect the rights of adoptive parents. ''Every surrender of a child by an agency and every consent to adoption by a private individual should take place before a judge,'' said Judge Jeffry H. Gallet of the Family Court, who, after the killing, ordered Lisa's brother returned to his biological mother. (Neither child had been formally adopted).
Some advocates for children are seeking a change that would allow unsubtantiated reports of child abuse to remain in confidential files to guide subsequent investigations.
Meanwhile, William J. Grinker, the commissioner of the Human Resources Administration, plans to expand the internal board that reviews the deaths of childrens from families known to his child abuse agency. The panel would include three members from outside city government.
In November, after two years of negotiation over what the job would entail, Mr. Grinker hired additional managers to improve the supervision of child protective services workers - 60 percent of whom leave each year.
He still believes that family services, from employment to day care, could be better integrated within his own administration. However, he said that ''if after another year we're not doing any better, I may come to the conclusion, let's see if it would do better on its own'' as a separate department for children.
In nearly 100 days since Lisa Steinberg was fatally beaten, Mr. Grinker said that in balancing the government's protective role with privacy rights, ''I think we've learned that there are more things that we can and should be doing and there are limits to what we can do.''
Mr. Stein agreed only that, given all of the proposed improvements, not enough has been done. ''There's no question that if they adopted all or some of the recommendations they'd save lives,'' he said. ''You can't say how many. You can't say Lisa Steinberg would have been saved. But there would have been a better chance.''