Epress.am News from Armenia
A young woman was violently beaten in broad daylight by her husband on Yerevan’s Teryan street on Saturday as a crowd of people just stood by and did nothing “because it’s his wife,” Zara Hovhannisyan, the coordinator of “Coalition to Stop Violence against Women” NGO, wrote on her Facebook page after witnessing the incident and rushing to the woman’s aid. The abuser, according to the witness, was Gevorg Sargsyan, a Yerevan man known by the nickname "Jungle" who is currently undergoing trial for assault charges.
“[My husband and I] are just driving by when we see a man horrifically beating up a young woman, punching and kicking her, dragging her along the ground. I don’t even wait for the car to stop, I jump out of it and run to the woman, try to help her. The woman clings on to me from behind, holds my hands tightly and pleads that I save her. The young man is so strong that he manages to drag us both to his car; he puts us inside and tries to get us out of there with the help of his friend who is behind the wheel. Meanwhile, the girl is wailing, pleading for help; the man is yelling at me to let go, that it is his wife and I have no business intervening. He starts pulling at my hands; tries to go over me and hit the girl, pulls her hair. As soon as my husband gets there, the man asks him whether I’m his wife and that he should tell me to leave them, ‘why isn’t your wife obeying you?’
"‘Why should she obey me?’ my husband replies. The scuffle goes on for about 20 minutes, and all the while no one is able to save us from this animal’s clutches. Finally, I manage somehow to jump out of the car, and since the girl is hanging on to me like a wounded animal, we run to her workplace on the opposite side of the street. Meanwhile, people are just standing by, watching and saying they can’t do anything because it’s his wife,” Hovhannisyan wrote.
The human rights activist said Jungle managed to escape the scene, while the woman and she were taken to a police station to file a crime report. A further conversation with the woman, Hovhannisyan continued, revealed that she was being subjected to constant abuse at the hands of her husband but was too scared to end the marriage. “It’s the girl’s birthday today, and after an argument in the morning, she decided not to go back to his house. Her partner, for his part, went to her workplace and threatened to kill her, and he might have very well succeeded had I not interfered.”
Hovhannisyan, who told us that the woman is currently at her mother’s house, also published photos of the woman’s bruised arms; “There are bite marks on her hands; he was biting her trying to get her to let go of me.”
“I explained to her that she was in great danger, that we could help her, provide her with safe shelter and legal support. But it was getting too late and she said she had to go back to her kids and promised to think about my offer,” Hovhannisyan told Epress.am.