27-Year-Old Woman Who Suffered Domestic Violence in Ashotsk Takes Her Own Life

Human rights advocate Zara Hovhannisyan made a post on her Facebook page, drawing attention to the suicide of a young woman in the village of Mets Sepasar in Ashotsk on December 21. "So, pay close attention, you who call my work a blasphemy. You don't care at all about the fact that yesterday, a 27-year-old woman, a mother of young children, took her life by hanging herself. According to the community leader, the young woman may have resorted to this action due to being deprived of contact with her children. She was married in Spitak. About a month ago, her husband brought her to Mets Sepasar to live with her mother, while depriving her of contact with their two children. This is by no means an isolated case. At this moment, many mothers are suffering and waiting for fair treatment from the relevant authorities, yet both guardianship bodies and even the courts and the agencies responsible for the enforcement of court decisions continue to leave mothers in precarious situations, which also distorts the destinies of the children," she wrote.

"I also want to tell you about Emma, whose life also ended in suicide. She got married in 2000. The marriage was arranged by her parents. By 2004, she had two children, a girl and a boy. Since 2004, when her husband's sister returned from Russia, family conflicts began. Emma returned to her parental home several times due to domestic violence, reconciled with her husband, and then returned again. In 2009, Emma gave birth to her third child, but the violence continued. Her mother-in-law and husband obtained a letter from a neurologist stating that Emma suffered from severe depression, but her husband and mother-in-law spread rumors throughout the community that she had mental health issues and somehow had her registered at the psychiatric hospital in Sevan.

Her husband took the children away from Emma, turning them against her, which resulted in the children not wanting to see or communicate with her. Her husband moved with the children to Kharberd, remarried, and had another child. Emma lived in her father's house in Martuni. After some time, her eldest son began to secretly contact her. During one of their phone calls, the father noticed, got angry with his son, and forbade him from talking to his mother again. After all this, Emma, distressed at the thought that her kids would be punished for any contact with her and that she would never see them again, took her own life by hanging in January 2016," Hovhannisyan recounted.

The full post is available on the human rights advocate's Facebook page.