Susan Schechter

A pioneer of the battered women's movement, Susan Schechter helped change the way criminal justice and social service agencies respond to violence against women and children. Schechter gained national recognition in 1982 through her groundbreaking work, Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women's Movement, a chronicle of the early history of the domestic violence movement. 

Through her work and writing, she shined light on the intersecting problems of domestic violence, child abuse, poverty, and substance abuse. Schechter challenged the domestic violence and child welfare communities to work through their distrust of each other and find ways to collaborate on behalf of battered women and their children. 

She founded the first program in the country to address child abuse in homes affected by intimate violence. She coauthored Effective Intervention in Domestic Violence and Child Maltreatment Cases: Guidelines for Policy and Practice, also called the "Green Book," which serves as a roadmap for developing programs that serve children and their mothers. 

As a clinical professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Iowa, Schechter was widely published and in great demand as a speaker. 

She won the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators Award for Leadership in Public Child Welfare in 2003, among other honors, and was a member of the National Advisory Council on Violence Against Women. 

Schechter died on February 3 of endometrial cancer. She is survived by her husband, Allen Steinberg, and their son Zachary.