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Ararat Davtyan

Adolescent Street Beggars: Ringleader Appeals Seven Year Sentence

“No, Gagik didn’t dangle me from their seventh story window to throw me down. The window was merely open and he stood me in front. I can’t say why. It was a good day. I gave him the money. Maybe he was angry or something.” This is what 13 year-old Abgar recounts. He attends the Vardashen #1 boarding school. He’s been working as a beggar in the service of 34 year-old Garik Hovhannisyan for quite some time.

Garik Hovhannisyan has been convicted twice before. Once for “causing minor psychical injury with premeditation” and once for “hooliganism”. Besides Abgar, another group of adolescents worked for him as beggars.

The lid on this story opened in the summer of last year when 14 year-old Aram, another boy at the school engaged in panhandling, caught the attention of the police. He described the situation that he and Abgar found themselves in. As a result, Garik Hovhannisyan was arrested a few days later.

During the preliminary investigation the two boys stated that it was through a mutual friend, Varuzhan that they met up with Garik Hovhannisyan. It turns out that Mr. Hovhannisyan is Varuzhan’s stepfather. Learning that the boys sometimes engaged in begging, Garik began to force them to hand over their earnings to him so that he could repair his car that he used as a taxi. This forced payment took place during 2007-2008.

Shades of Oliver Twist in Armenia?

“I never wanted to go to school so I always cut classes. But I could never go home because my mother would get mad and send me back. I’d go to Garik’s house where they treated me well and never punished or hit me. Everything was fine. Garik would take me and Varuzhan to the downtown district of the city where we’d beg for money. We’d give him what we collected. Once, I collected about 20-25,000 drams. Garik was overjoyed and bought me some good eats, grilled meats, etc. He was very good to me. But if we’d collect less than 10,000 drams he’d get upset. I was afraid of the scorpion tattoo on Garik’s body. I was afraid that he’d throw me out of the house, that he’d get mad and beat me. That’s why I panhandled for money and gave it to him,” answered Aram in response to the investigator’s questions.

Abgar said that he stayed at Garik’s house for about twenty-five days. Every day Garik would drive them to work, the intersection of Amiryan and Abovyan Streets in Yerevan. He’d pick them up at around 12-1 latter that night. Abgar would hand over the daily proceeds of 10-15,000 drams directly to Garik or to Varuzhan.

“I handed money personally to Garik about 10 or 15 times. On those occasions when I didn’t want to go out and beg, Garik would threaten me. Once, when I told Garik that I would no longer beg for him he got cross and hit me on my hands and back. I tried to escape but Garik came after me in his car, shoved me in, and took me home. In June, 2008, I bought a 5,000 dram Nokia phone with the money I made from begging but Garik took it from me. I asked him to give it back but he told me to forget about it,” Abgar recounts.

The preliminary examining body initially charged Garik Hovhannisyan with “involving adolescents in anti-social behavior”. Later on the indictment was upgraded to read “involving two or more adolescents in forced work or service or holding them in slave-like conditions”. In other words, Garik’s actions were categorized as labor trafficking and now he was facing a sentence of 7-12 years imprisonment rather than just 6.

The sentence is upgraded to trafficking

In a conversation with Hetq, Garik Hovhannisyan said, “Six months later they changed the indictment and I was charged with trafficking. Investigator Artur Avetisyan tried to trip me up by saying, ‘look, Garik, now you are facing trafficking charges and the court will come down on you’. I told him that he was wasting his time,” Mr. Hovhannisyan told Hetq.

During the pre-trial examination it was learnt that other adolescents also suffered at the hands of Garik Hovhannisyan. As a result, the indictment was reassessed.

“The investigator rounded up this drunken bum and he came to visit me in the detention center, to conduct a face-to-face interrogation. I got angry and shoved the investigator. I flicked my cigarette into the bum’s face and I left. I told him that I had nothing to say and that he could write whatever he wanted,” Mr. Hovhannisyan told Hetq.

The “drunken bum” described by Mr. Hovhannisyan is 16 year-old Igor, a student at Nubarashen’s #18 Special School. 12 year-old Hamlet, another student at the school, also testified at the preliminary examination along with Igor

Igor testified that Garik proposed that the boys take up begging. In return for handing over all the money to him, Garik promised the boys that he’d look after them and let them sleep in his house. They worked for him for about twenty days.

Garik demanded that the boys fork over at least 10,000 dram daily, otherwise he’d threaten them and beat them a few times. The threats were along the lines of, “If you don’t earn money for me I’ll shove you into the trunk of my car, drive to the canyon and throw you over.”

“Once, we had collected 4,000 drams. Garik beat me in the house,” Igor wrote in his testimony. Hamlet added that Garik forced them to beg for food in the Malatya market.

Garik Hovhannisyan’s lawyer, public defender Siranoush Harutyunyan, presented a motion during the pre-trial examination requesting that the criminal charges be dropped as there was no corpus deliciti.

“Garik Hovhannisyan is innocent of the initial charges and the reassessed indictment because there was no criminal intent in engaging in begging, obtaining a profit, etc. In essence, he didn’t involve those boys in the acct of begging. Those boys were picked up off the streets by various organizations for panhandling and loitering and placed in boarding school.

Ringleader pleads innocence

As to the sums collected, Garik doesn’t deny the fact that he asked the boys for money and that they lent it to him. He says he paid them back. The boys don’t refute this in their testimony. The question remains whether there was coercion involved. Did he beat them or not? According to the public defender, Garik claims that nothing of the sort happened. In her motion, Siranoush Harutyunyan stressed the fact that panhandling is an anti-social act that cannot be viewed as forced labor.

This motion and others of a similar nature made by the defense attorney were rejected by the court as baseless. Varuzhan, Garik’s stepson, was also included as an aggrieved party in the case. He didn’t testify against his stepfather. The other boys followed Varuzhan’s cue and renounced the incriminatory testimony they had previously given.

The court found Varuzhan’s testimony not to be credible. According to the petitions presented by the parents of the other boys, the adolescents were interrogated a second time. This time, they stood by their previous testimony.

In a conversation with Hetq, Aram said that he had withdrawn his testimony because Varuzhan and his mother, Lianoush Mirzoyan, demanded that he do so. Abgar said that he pitied Garik and that’s why he changed his story.

On April 2, 2009, Garik Hovhannisyan was sentenced to seven years by the Kentron and Nork-Marash District Court. Mr. Hovhannisyan has filed an appeal.

“If the Court of Appeals judges the case correctly I should be found innocent since I do not regard my actions as criminal in nature,” Garik Hovhannisyan claims with an air of confidence. “Everyone knows that these boys are street kids who sell flowers and panhandle. They are friends of Lianoush’s boy. They always used to visit our house. Am I a child welfare officer who duty it is to send them to school? Or am I a heartless person to throw them out onto the street? There was a time that they ask me to drive them downtown or to pick them up in the evenings. I did what they asked. Is there a crime in that? If so, let them charge me for it and not for trafficking,” Garik said.

On June 3, Appeals Court Judge Aida Hovhannisyan was to begin a review of the case.

P.S. 
– The names of all the adolescents in the article have been changed.

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