Wife Abuser Sentenced to Life Term for Torture

VAN NUYS — In one of the first domestic violence cases of its kind, a 23-year-old man convicted of torturing and abusing his wife was sentenced Friday to life in prison.

Calling the case horrifying, Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Kathryne Ann Stoltz said Andranik Arabyan “must take full responsibility for what he did.”

Arabyan in July was convicted of abusing his wife, who is now 19, for four years. Twice, he tied up his wife, locked her in a bathroom and burned her wrists with a lit cigarette, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jennifer Turkat.

“There were just too many acts of violence, too many to count,” Turkat said. “Once the violence started in the marriage, then it began occurring two to three times a month.”

In one instance, a drunken Arabyan put nail polish on his wife’s wounds and urinated on her head, Turkat said.

The life sentence is believed to be the first imposed for domestic violence under a state law enacted after Proposition 115, the so-called Crime Victim’s Justice Reform Initiative, was approved by voters in 1990.

That initiative stemmed, in part, from the public outcry over the release of Lawrence Singleton, who served only eight years of a 14-year sentence for raping a teenage hitchhiker and hacking off her forearms with an ax 19 years ago in Northern California. Singleton was charged with the stabbing murder earlier this year of a 31-year-old woman at his Florida home.

Stoltz said the life sentence is warranted because of the “terror involved and the manner in which injury was inflicted.”

Defense attorney Michael M. Levin said he will appeal both the torture conviction and the life sentence. While conceding Arabyan was abusive, he argued the injuries were not severe enough to qualify for life imprisonment under the law.

“You just can’t consider cigarette burns to be great bodily injury,” Levin said.

He said jurors who found Arabyan guilty of torture “were all shocked” to learn the verdict carried a life sentence.

Arabyan will be eligible for parole in seven years, the judge said.

“They all said they expected he would be given from five to 12 years,” Levin said. “One of the jurors cried when he heard it could be for life.”

The torture conviction for domestic violence is a first, said Alan Yochelson, head of the district attorney’s unit in Van Nuys that prosecutes sex crimes, child abuse and domestic violence. “It has been charged before but has never gone this far. We reviewed the case extensively and felt that the facts were very clear,” he said.

The couple, who have a 2-year-old daughter, lived in a Van Nuys home with Arabyan’s parents and a brother. “The family had to know what was going on and they did nothing,” Turkat said. “I find that appalling, absolutely appalling.”

Shaking with emotion, tears rolling down her cheeks, Arabyan’s mother on Friday pleaded for leniency, hoping the judge would place him on probation rather than impose the mandatory life sentence.

A friend of Arabyan also asked for mercy.

“You’re not God, but today you are God,” Jessie Karyan told the judge. “It would be a shame to put a 23-year-old boy in prison for life.”