Lynne Stevens, 63; researched gender violence
The bright blues, pinks, and golds that were sewn together to form yoga bags that Lynne Stevens sold in Boston and New York were made from fabrics hand-picked from around the world. Their cheery nature belied the more serious concern that brought the Boston University assistant professor to all corners of the globe, where she trained medical professionals to ask probing questions of their patients to properly treat victims of violent abuse.
Her work to spread training materials and protocols worldwide came from years of seeing, through her private practice as a psychotherapist, how medical professionals struggled to cope with the bruises, broken bones, and emotional wounds of patients who would jump any time an examination led to physical contact.
The women who made their way to Ms. Stevens’s private psychotherapy practice had suffered through a range of traumas. Many of them were victims of domestic violence. What surprised her, however, was that their medical doctors had generally not inquired about the cause of those physical signs of abuse. If they did ask, said Ms. Stevens’s spouse, Deborah Maine of South Boston, they awkwardly backed into it, asking, “You weren’t sexually abused, were you?’’
“She used to say there were two silent people in the room - the person who wanted to tell, and the person who either wanted to ask or should be asking, but they didn’t have training, and they didn’t have protocols,’’ Maine said.
For two decades, Ms. Stevens treated patients from all walks of life in her Manhattan practice, before shifting in 2005 to the world of research at her alma mater, Boston University.
Ms. Stevens died of cancer Saturday at her home in South Boston.
She was 63.
Working with others in the field, Ms. Stevens developed a guide for healthcare providers and managers through the United Nations Population Fund.
A 2001 pilot edition of the guide, “A Practical Guide to Gender-Based Violence, enabled clinics in different countries to apply varying degrees of the program.
She worked with clinics and nongovernmental organizations in Nepal, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Armenia, often amid patriarchal societies that made it challenging to address gender-based violence.
“The reception was mixed and often controversial, as you might imagine,’’ said her sister, Wendy of Stowe, Vt.
In one country, she found such hostility that she pulled together everyone she had been working with and used her skills as a therapist to get to the bottom of the problem.
Ms. Stevens was driven, in part, by a childhood tragedy that made her eager to help others cope with difficult situations. When she was 12, she lost her mother to stomach cancer, and the death left an irreparable tear in the family.
“I think Lynne gained an enormous amount of courage and dignity of style,’’ her sister said. “She drew incredible strength from it.’’
The Columbia, S.C., native grew up in New York City and studied psychology at BU, graduating in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree. She worked for a time as a buyer for a department store in New York before earning her master’s in social work from Fordham University in 1973.
She worked as a case manager for the New York state Department of Child Welfare for a while, helping place children in foster care, and had a stint with a community mental health center in New York before opening her private practice on the Upper West Side.
She ran the practice from her apartment, using colorful décor to make the space inviting to her patients.
“It was lovely and really reflected her, homey and cozy, a very warm, embracing space,’’ her sister said.
In treating patients, “she wanted to understand what made people hurt the way they did and help them to get a better way of dealing with it,’’ Maine said. “She thought things don’t have to cripple you.’’
She taught at a number of New York universities, including Cornell University Medical College, where she developed a curriculum for an elective course on treating gender-based violence.
She and Maine moved to Boston in 2005 and were married in 2006, in a celebration of what was already a 20-year partnership. She worked on revising other medical school curriculums to add a component that addressed gender-based violence. She was also director of a program she had helped launch, Responding to Violence Against Women, which had an international scope.
About two years ago, she started the yoga bag line, called Samadhi, a Sanskrit word for high levels of concentrated meditation.
“One day in Nepal, a colleague took me to get some clothes made,’’ she wrote on the company’s website. “We went to the tailor and it hit me. Why wouldn’t you wear pink, saffron, or purple silk rather than black or brown all the time?’’
She wrote that while practicing yoga in New York, she could not find a bag for her yoga mat that she truly liked, so she made her own. The admiration of fellow yoga participants led her to create her own line. She hired local women to stitch them from fabrics that she and Maine selected from around the world.
“Lynne had a very lively brain and a great deal of personal style,’’ her sister said.
In addition to her spouse and her sister, Ms. Stevens leaves an aunt, Sherrey Glickman of New Jersey.
A memorial service is planned for next spring. 