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Hedda Nussbaum Promotes Her Memoir on Life With an Abuser
The New York Times, April 6, 2006 by Corey Kilgannon
While it has been nearly two decades since the 6-year-old Lisa Steinberg was found battered and dying on the floor of a filthy Greenwich Village apartment, it was only recently that the woman who had been raising her, Hedda Nussbaum, felt compelled to change her name legally and move out of the state.
 But in 2004 her former companion, Joel B. Steinberg, was released from prison after serving 16 years for beating Lisa to death in 1987. Ms. Nussbaum said she was worried that Mr. Steinberg, who has been bouncing around hotels and rooming houses in Manhattan, would come after her. And the fear has only escalated now that she has finished a scathing memoir called "Surviving Intimate Terrorism" (PublishAmerica), a horrific account of the abuse she endured from Mr. Steinberg during their 12 years together.
She has refused to promote the book in New York City, because Mr. Steinberg lives there. The closest she ventured to the city recently was Rockland County last Friday, when she agreed to be the keynote speaker at a conference on domestic violence.
She said the book might provoke Mr. Steinberg, since it "reveals everything he has denied all these years."
Ms. Nussbaum, who wears a wig and disguises herself during her rare ventures into Manhattan, said she took precautionary measures by warning Mr. Steinberg's parole officer that she would be speaking at the conference at Dominican College in Orangeburg, N.Y., about 27 miles north of Midtown. She was assured that Mr. Steinberg's parole requires him to clear any plans to leave the city, and that he had not mentioned anything about Rockland County.
The full text of this article may be purchased at The New York Times.
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