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The Eleventh Hour graphic and show opener.

Host Robert Lipsyte in the studio welcomes viewers to The Eleventh Hour and introduces himself. He talks about the topic of today's program, the role Hedda Nussbaum played in the death of the child she lived with. The question, was she a victim herself or an accomplice is the topic of the show.

INTERVIEW:

Robert Lipsyte:

manslaughter one but the other verdict that silent verdict have Hedda Nussbaum Phyllis, what should have Hedda Nussbaum have gotten?

Phyllis B. Frank
Well, I think that Hedda Nussbaum should be exonerated. I think it has come out the way it should, though I would have preferred to see a more stringent sentence or verdict for Joel Steinberg, I see Hedda Nussbaum as someone who was beaten into submission, who was terrorized for a significant period of time, and who in fact, behaved in a way that is commensurate with the treatment that had befall in her.

Robert Lipsyte
Susan,

Susan Brownmiller
while agreeing with Phyllis, I would have if I had been a member of the jury voted to convict Joel Steinberg on murder two the most serious charge he was up for. I strongly disagree with Phyllis, however, and feel that Hedda Nussbaum should have been brought up on charges herself. And if I had been the district attorney or if the district attorney had consulted me, I would have said that she should have been brought up on the charge of reckless endangerment of the welfare of a child, at the least at the least I would have preferred a public airing in a court of law on her culpability.

Robert Lipsyte
But there's no question in your mind that she was certainly culpable that she was an accomplice to this murder.

Susan Brownmiller
Well, Judge Rothwax himself instructed the jury to view her testimony is that if an accomplice, yes, it is my opinion, I feel and I have no problems. With this distinction. I feel that she was indeed a victim of Joel Steinberg but I feel she was also responsible for abdicating all all of her personal will, within the relationship with Steinberg for 12 years. And I certainly think that she is morally culpable for the death of Lisa Steinberg.

Robert Lipsyte
The lines are certainly drawn on that. Do you? There must have been something though, that that drew you to this case. I mean, more than just it being a couple of blocks away from your home. Somehow, somehow this this death struck New York in a very particular kind of a way. Was it the death of Lisa or was it the relationship between Joel and Hedda? What do you think it was that that made us so interested in?

Phyllis B. Frank
I think one piece is that this is an upper middle class family and there are lots of myths and stereotypes about where women abuse or domestic violence occurs. There was public display that this happens in upper middle class families. I think that's one reason that there was a A lot of publicity, because I think the situation is not terribly unusual. I think it happens much more often than we are exposed to in the media.

Robert Lipsyte
I, you must feel the same way I've read the book and it's it's the rub between the Joel and Hedda characters. That's the the fabric of the book.

Susan Brownmiller
Well, that was the relationship that I wanted to explore. Yeah, the psycho dynamics between the violent batterer and the woman who chooses to put up with the battery out of what I consider to be really misguided and abnormal concepts of love. And, of course, ultimately, the victim is an innocent child. Yeah.

Robert Lipsyte
And you felt that she had the control somewhere along the way to step out.

Susan Brownmiller
Oh, to get out? Yes, I think that in in with Nussbaum and Steinberg. When Hedda Nussbaum met Joel Steinberg in 1975. She was already 32 years old. And I think that she was an adult,

Robert Lipsyte
she should have she to do that she shall we have another clip of Hedda Nussbaum's testimony, which might shed some more light on her state of mind.

Back in the studio interview with Phyllis Frank and Susan Brownmiller continues.

Host Lipsyte announces a break and cuts to a pre-recorded interview with Thea DuBow , a victim of an abusive relationship.

INTERVIEW

Robert Lipsyte:
anything in your own mind any memories of your own relationship?

Thea DuBow
Yes, it did. Bob, it made me really know how much control a man can have over a woman?

Robert Lipsyte
Did your husband have the same kind of control over you that Joel Steinberg had over the Hedda?

Thea DuBow
Well, I can definitely see some similarities from what I've heard and read.

Robert Lipsyte
And you were married when you were 21? And what was the How did it start? What was the beginning what things happened?

Thea DuBow
Well, looking back in retrospect, I can see that before the actual physical violence that my husband used on me. There was he first isolated me, from my family, and from my friends. And I stopped driving as a result of his control.

Robert Lipsyte
What else? How did he How did he cut you away from your, your support systems, your friends, your family?

Thea DuBow
Well he intimidated my friends, he made it uncomfortable for them to be with me. He wanted to be in on our conversations, know what was said when he wasn't around. So my friends, one by one, stop calling me or coming around. And my parents, I would go over to their house and my parents would say, a lot of negative things about my husband, and I knew that they weren't all unfounded. And I go home, and I'd be upset. And my husband would ask me what's wrong Thea? And I would say that I felt upset. And I tell him why. And he'd say, Well, if your parents upset, you don't see them. And so on two different occasions, I didn't speak to them for a year at a time.

Robert Lipsyte
Did he dress you?

Thea DuBow
Well, he did select the clothing that I didn't buy. We went to the store together and when I would try things on, he would tell me what he thought of them and I would purchase whatever he liked.

Robert Lipsyte
Did you like that in the beginning, that kind of attention?

Thea DuBow
Initially, I thought it was affection. I thought it was him being loving. And now I know that it was him being controlling. He would take me work. He would meet me for lunch and he would pick me up. Isn't he attentive? What better way to gain control over someone than to be with them all the time and not allow them to touch base with other people, not to reality test with other people.

Robert Lipsyte
At what point did the violence begin?

Thea DuBow
The violence didn't begin until the isolation was set in place. First he laid some groundwork, and then the violence did begin. And it started with a slap. And he was so sorry. He was never going to do it again. He lost his head. And I forgave him, like so many other women do, as women in the society were taught to be very forgiving and be very much the nurturer.

Robert Lipsyte
Now, now, once you realize that it was a recurring pattern, you you weren't able to leave.

Thea DuBow
Unfortunately, I never realized it was a recurring pattern, until out of until I was out of the situation. While I was in that relationship, I thought that the abuse was my fault. I wasn't abused as a child. And for someone to hit me, I thought that I must have done something terribly wrong.

Robert Lipsyte
How did you resolve the relationship?

Thea DuBow
Unfortunately, I was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree and spent three and a half years at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.

Robert Lipsyte
You don't, you don't consider killing one's husband in such a relationship and option.

Thea DuBow
It's definitely a non option. If I was educated, to abuse, I spent 19 years in school, and I had no education to domestic violence, to the symptoms of domestic violence and its dynamics, I feel that I would have been equipped to pick up the early warning signs and leave that relationship in a timely manner.

Robert Lipsyte
So you don't feel as some people do that, that Hedda Nussbaum should also be convicted for manslaughter, one along with Joel.

Thea DuBow
No, I do not feel that way. Although I do feel that she was responsible as the mother of Lisa, I feel that she was incapable of action.

Robert Lipsyte
When you get out now talking to groups, talking to other women out there. What's the first thing that you tell them to do? Do you tell them that the first time they're slapped for the first time, there's that sense of violence just to get out of the situation?

Thea DuBow
Well, I don't tell women to do anything, I will present the facts about domestic violence, and tell them what the probability is statistically, that it will be a reoccurring thing and how many women it happens to how frequently it happens. And I will offer them support. And I will give them resources where they can receive support in their community. And it's up to them to decide what they would like to do,

Robert Lipsyte
you're not going to add to their control. I mean, you're talking about empowering them to make their own decisions.

Thea DuBow
That's correct. In an abusive relationship. Whether a woman stays or leaves may be the last decision that she has left, her abuser is making all the other decisions for her.

Robert Lipsyte
Thank you very much for being with us.

Thea DuBow
Thank you

The Eleventh Hour graphic

INTERVIEW

Robert Lipsyte:
the kind of loss of sense of self isn't there,

Phyllis B. Frank
there is no more compelling argument against the point of view that you're presenting Susan, then the combined voice of the battered women's movement so beautifully spoken by a formerly battered woman Thea. It says it all it really helps you to understand that women very often at the point where we the public would say yes, she should leave, have already been so systematically terrorized. She can't do it. She simply can't do it.

Robert Lipsyte
And yet not for me to speak for Susan Brownmiller. She did talk about an educational process that would have given her the sense to get out, didn't she?

Susan Brownmiller
I disagree with you, Phyllis on the question of terrorized when we're talking about Hedda Nussbaum. Hedda did not say that she lived in terror of Joel. She said she loved him and thought he was a human God. And I find that compelling too. I mean, I think Thea is an extraordinary witness

Robert Lipsyte
Well isn't that a kind of terror, Susan, I mean to have that kind of total misapplication of love.

Susan Brownmiller
It began very early Bob in their relationship. She had barely met this man when she She began to attribute to Him supernatural powers. And as a feminist, let me tell you, the first miracle she attributed to him was that she could wear high heels for the first time in his in her life, because she used to have trouble with her feet. The second miracle was that she had a spastic colon that righted itself after she moved into his apartment. The third miracle was that she got a lot of raises at work, not because she thought she'd been good at work, but because he told her to go in and be more assertive. So he became her God, her therapist, her lover, her controller, her batterer,

Robert Lipsyte
and you still feel she was in control of her life after all these feelings? The reason? The thing I would like to answer is that, so much of my so much of my thinking, is informed by your book against our will. And as I think a lot of people who would be proud to call themselves feminists in some way, and and the idea that one of the threads of that book, one of the important things that I think we will learn from it, was the idea of taking our personal point of view from the oppressor.

Susan Brownmiller
May I say something, since you so kindly brought up against our will, there are, I feel very important differences between rape and battery that I believe the women's movement has not sufficiently explored. Rape is an isolated incident, where there is an aggressive assailant and a victim who could be any woman. In battery, you have a sustained relationship conducted over many years, there is no one isolated incident, there is a pattern of abuse, and a pattern of denial. And, and a working very hard on the woman's power to last the word here to to give herself excuse a pattern of excuses for the batter, that the woman goes through constantly, constantly trying to give him the excuse, saying it won't happen again. Therefore, I think we have to have a different response to the victim.

Interview concludes. Host Lipsyte thanks guests and announces domestic violence hotline numbers to appear at end of program

show credits overlay wide shot of Lipsyte, Frank and Brownmiller on sofa in studio.

reel ends.