Susan Xenarios, crime victim advocate, long-time LGBTQ ally, dies at 79

Susan Xenarios, LCSW, a visionary and dynamic leader of New York’s crime victim movement for 50 years and a courageous ally of the LGBTQ community, died on Sept. 6 in Manhattan. She was 79.

In 1974, an assailant held a knife to Ms. Xenarios’s throat and raped her on a rooftop in Upper Manhattan. At a time when few sexual assault victims spoke out, she began a lifelong, public campaign to improve the care and treatment of survivors and to reform laws and police procedures. Along with her high-profile advocacy, she never stopped counseling individual survivors of crime, pioneering breakthrough therapeutic interventions.

Ms. Xenarios led the creation of New York’s first program to provide assistance to survivors of sexual assault, the state’s first clinical program for male survivors, and t