OUCH . . .

Remember Lisa Steinberg? Even if you lived outside of the New York metro-area sixteen years ago, you might have heard about her: the little 6-year-old girl, abused and neglected and near-starved. Half a girl, really, for she never really grew to the size of a normal 6-year-old.

She was illegally adopted by an attorney, Joel Steinberg, and his common-law wife Hedda Nussbaum. Steinberg beat Hedda too, and the news photos of her misshapen face linger in my memory still. The trial was sordid and sensational: he said she did it out of jealousy about the attention he paid to Lisa; she said he beat the hell out of Lisa because the kid was "staring at him." Does it matter? She got immunity and a new life in Westchester, which she has now fled out of fear of running into the paroled Steinberg. He got a little over sixteen years in jail, and now a new lease on life, complete with a free apartment on Central Park West and a job offer in cable television.

Lisa was the first time I had ever become aware of child abuse as an issue. After all, I was never abused. I don't think I knew anyone who was abused. It was never something that concerned me. It took Lisa's malnutritioned, pathetic half-grown face to show me the pure evil that motivates one to hit, strike, neglect, beat on, put cigarettes out on, starve a child.

The newspapers are abuzz once more. Steinberg walks out of Southport Correctional Facility within the hour and it's just about the biggest deal this side of the Hudson River as anything else ...

I don't really have anything else to say about it. It was horrible then, it's horrible now. Hedda Nussbaum has gone underground, Lisa Steinberg is still buried six feet under, Joel Steinberg walks the streets of New York once more and God knows what will happen to him. The New York Daily News has a suggestion for how we can treat him:

Her name was Lisa and she was 6 years old. Sixteen and one-half years ago, when she died of the bludgeonings her crack-crazed daddy gave her, she became an emblem for us in the City of New York, a tiny, frightened Snow White who had been shut away in a wicked, unspeakable place.

She trusted us to hear her cries and we closed our ears. She trusted us to see her bruises and we looked away. In guilt and grief and remorse, we gathered at her doorstep to throw down flowers. And all of us hated the odious Joel Steinberg as we pretty much never hated anyone else.

Let Lisa be remembered. Joel Steinberg walks free from prison today, his release mandated by law. He has formally paid his debt to the State of New York. But he has not paid his debt to humanity, nor to Lisa, nor is he welcome in this city, where he intends to live. He must know that.

Stare at him.

Wherever he goes, stare at him.

Up the street, down the subway, into the corner deli - stare at him. Unflinchingly and unrelentingly and unforgivingly, stare at him. Let him feel every New York eye burning straight through his rotten soul.

Joel Steinberg doesn't like to be stared at. That rattles him. That's why he broke apart a baby girl with his bare hands. She was staring at him, he thought.

So stare at him.

Do not touch him. Do not do him harm. Do not spit on him. Do not curse him aloud. Say nothing. Just stare.

Just stand back, give him room, and stare at Joel Steinberg, every hour of every day.

Let him never forget how much he is despised, forever.