THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS	Local Friday, June 27, 1997

I t couldn't happen today.

At least that's the theory posited by a friend of mine about Ira Einhorn.

Einhorn couldn't get away with being a public prophet of peace and a private practitioner of domestic violence in a world now so acutely sensitive to the topic.

In this post-O.J. world, my friend argues, rumors and suspicions of Einhorn's abuse would surface -- perhaps in a media whose spotlight is far less forgiving than it used to be -- and Einhorn would be exposed as a dangerous fraud.

Our misconceptions about battering have been exposed by O.J. Simpson -- that it only happens among the lower class, for instance -- and it's no longer unthinkable that a prominent public face masks a dark menace.

Not to mention that Einhorn's megalomania, controlling behavior and demeaning public treatment of Holly Maddux would arouse suspicion, too.

Paul Bukovec, a clinical social worker who runs a counseling program for abusive men called Menergy, said a friend of his who knew Einhorn and Maddux well said Einhorn ``would interrupt and belittle her, and my friend heard that he had hit her.

``If I were to put that together with his rather bizarre self-importance, I'd say nowadays, he would probably be singled out, people would be pointing it out and telling stories in public.''

In this post-O.J. world, we've all been enlisted as monitors of abusive relationships by activists who encourage us to intervene to save a life.

Just yesterday I heard a public service announcement on the radio in which a woman talks about the evidence of abuse she ignored in a friend because, she says: ``I didn't want to lose a friendship . . . Instead, I lost a friend.''

The empowerment of women is such that Einhorn's history of violence -- he describes two incidents in his journal in which he attacked girlfriends prior to Holly Maddux -- would be certain to come to public light.

Einhorn tried to strangle one girlfriend in 1962. Three years later, he struck another girlfriend in the head with an empty bottle and, when she fell to the ground, bleeding, he tried to strangle her, too.

It's no longer a man's world in which such things are shrugged off or ignored as irrelevant to a man's public respectability.

If someone as powerful as Bob Packwood could be deposed because of sexual harassment, a public figure exposed as a batterer -- especially one peddling a higher morality to a corrupt world -- would be banished to oblivion.

While only a few years ago, a corporation like Avis could retain O.J. Simpson as its spokesman even after a violent incident with his wife, it's unlikely that would ever happen again.

And since Einhorn had nothing to peddle but his charisma, public censure would have cost him the credibility that enabled him to be philosopher-king to a city.

Holly Maddux, at least, would have been forewarned.

She'd have known -- as we all do, now -- that dominating, possessive, controlling men are most dangerous when you try to end a relationship, as she'd done just before her 1977 murder.

Presumably, today, Maddux would be less embarrassed about asking for help -- and her story would be met with less skepticism and condemnation. Which isn't to say that Holly Maddux's life would necessarily be saved.

Public exposure might not prevent women from being involved with Einhorn -- witness his current wife, who allegedly knew he was wanted for murder.

And despite all we now know about domestic violence, women still are killed by their spouses all the time.

But the loyal supporters who rallied around Einhorn -- who testified at his bail hearing, who had faith in his innocence, who financed his escape and his life on the lam -- would no doubt abandon him as a pariah.

And you can bet that no judge today, sensitized to the issue of domestic violence, would ever set such a low bail -- $40,000 -- for such a hideous crime.

It may take a long time for Ira Einhorn to be extradited to the United States for the murder of Holly Maddux. It's of some comfort, anyway, that he'll come home to a different country than the one he left behind.

``I think a figure would have to make some kind of accounting more than in the early or mid-'70s, '' said Bukovec.

``Times have changed.''

Philadelphia Online -- Philadelphia Daily News -- Local News Copyright Friday, June 27, 1997