The slander suit launched by Gurgen Khachatryan, Rector of the Vanadzor Pedagogical Institute, against former instructor Lusineh Ashoughyan is continuing at the Vanadzor Regional Court.

Khachatryan has named Hetq Online and ATV television as 3rd party defendants but isn’t making any demands against them.

The rector is demanding that Ashoughyan retract the statements that appeared in the two news outlets and compensate him in the amount of 2 million AMD.

At the core of the legal suit is the “Half-opened window” program that appeared on ATV on June 15, 2011.

Rector Khachatryan finds some of the comments made by Ashoughyan during the program slanderous and defamatory.

The plaintiff also claims that a May 13, 2011 Hetq article entitled “Sick Passions in the Vanadzor Pedagogical Institute” included passages slandering his honor and good name.

In particular, there was a passage regarding Tereza Shahverdyan, Dean of the Pedagogical Faculty at the Hovhannes Tumanyan State Pedagogical Institute.

Shahverdyan and Liza Sargsyan, another instructor at the school, had gone to the Vanadzor police station alleging that Ashoughyan had been making death threats against Lusineh Sargsyan, the daughter of Liza.

The article in question goes on to reveal that the charge was an intentional falsehood (false denunciation) and that Shahverdyan had taken part at the urging of the rector.

According to the rector, the article implies that he had ordered her to make the false denunciation; i.e. that the rector also wanted to press charges against Lusineh Ashoughyan.

Ashoughyan says she never slandered the rector and that during the ATV program she only made references to his administrative violations.

The former teacher presented her substantiating evidence. She says that the post of teacher is based on a competition and that 5 year contracts are drawn up.

Ashoughyan claims the school has an unwritten law that after the five years are up, the school doesn’t announce a new competition but merely signs an additional one year contract with the teachers.

The defense team motioned the court to demand all documents related to teachers who have been employed for more than five years but not based on any competition but whose contracts have merely been renewed.

The court sustained the motion.

Ashoughyan believes that the rector thus keeps teachers in a constant state of limbo with such contracts and that teachers are forced to “suck up” to him in order to keep their jobs.

She says that the rector threatened punitive administrative actions against her if she continued to make public statements about the school.

The defendant also testified that the Armenian Language Faculty illegally issued her an official reprimand and that the rector had sent a memo urging the faculty head to take such a step.

Ashoughyan says she had kept the reprimand notice which she presented to the court.

As to the rector’s memo, the defendant motioned the court to have that submitted as well.

The court sustained the motion.