ARSON SPOTLIGHTS PROBLEMS\Armenian leaders cite dearth of help for immigrants.

Byline: Sara Catania Daily News Staff Writer

From her cramped office at the Armenian Relief Society, Louisa Gourjian watched the news last week as details of the gruesome burning death of an Armenian family unfolded.

She watched - and wondered what went wrong.

Perhaps nothing could have stopped Jorjik Avanesian, the man police say set the deadly gasoline fire that killed his wife and six children in the family's one-bedroom apartment in South Glendale.

Nonetheless, the deadliest fire and worst multiple homicide in Glendale history has led Gourjian and other leaders of the Armenian community to wonder whether anything could have been done to help the family.

And to wonder, beyond that, whether there are adequate support services for the city's Armenian population, which by some estimates has grown to 60,000, a third of the city's residents.

"We do not have enough to offer people," said Gourjian, assistant director of social services at the Armenian Relief Society, which helps as many as 20,000 immigrants a year with counseling, English classes, job placement, and many other services.

"We're far behind where we should be," said Vicken Sonentz-Papazian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee's western-region office in Glendale. "The city and the Armenian community just haven't kept pace with the need."

In the Glendale Police Department, for example, just four sworn officers in the 220-member force speak Armenian.

The department has tried for years to bring Armenians onto the force, said department spokesman Sgt. Rick Young. But a variety of practical and cultural barriers has made the task a difficult one.

"First of all, you have to be a citizen and fully fluent in English, so that delays the process for a few years," Young said. "Then there's the fact that police in the countries they are coming from are not highly respected, so it is not seen as a desirable job."

For decades, Glendale has been home to thousands of Armenians. In the 1980s, the population soared as Christian Armenian immigrants fled persecution in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.

Another wave of immigrants began arriving several years ago when Armenia broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Glendale City Councilman Larry Zarian acknowledged that efforts should be stepped up to aid the Armenian community in Glendale, but added that there are many other ethnic groups in the city in need of attention as well.

"There are 55 languages spoken on our school campuses," Zarian said. "This is more than an Armenian issue. It is about helping newcomers to our country and to our city."

To be sure, the Armenian community is far better equipped to help its own than some other, newer immigrant groups, said Svetlana Mollazadeh, director of the International Rescue Committee, a Los Angeles relief agency that assists immigrants from all countries.

In Glendale, dozens of Armenian churches, schools and shops dot the south end of the city. And hundreds of Armenian youths belong to special chapters of the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts of America.

"It's quite a large and well-established community," said Mollazadeh. "They are way ahead of some other immigrant groups that are just getting started, like the Bosnians."

At the same time, however, thousands of recent Armenian immigrants who need help refuse to seek it out, said Ara Khachatourian, an editor at Asbarez, a Glendale-based Armenian newspaper.

"Seeking counseling is not part of the society Armenians have grown up with," Khachatourian said. "These programs need to be accelerated. There needs to be outreach into the community to tell people it is OK to seek help; otherwise, the problems just continue to grow."

At the relief society one recent afternoon, Gourjian took dozens of calls from residents who want to help pay the funeral costs for 37-year-old Turan Soroush Avanesian and her six children - Roobina, Rita, Ronika, Rodric, Romik and Roland, who ranged in age from 17 to 4.

In the background, the television buzzed with accounts of the fire and Jorjik Avanesian's arrest.

It was from televised reports that Gourjian learned Avanesian had been referred to her agency after he was jailed in November for threatening 17-year-old Roobina with a knife. He never showed up.

Rubbing her eyes and sighing, Gourjian lamented the lack of a shelter at her agency for women like Turan Soroush Avanesian, who knew little English and whose only relatives in the United States were her husband and children.

She never sought such help, as far as Gourjian knows, but her options would have been disheartening if she had.

"When women come in here (and) say their husbands are beating them, we can only send them to the police or to the shelter at the YWCA," Gourjian said. "Going to the police is a disgrace for the family, and at the shelter, no one speaks their language, no one can really help them. One woman I sent there came back the next day and said she would rather be with her husband."

At other times, the language barrier makes it easier for families to conceal discord from the police, Gourjian said.

Such may have been the case with Jorjik Avanesian. Not until his court appearance last week did the system provide Avanesian with an interpreter. When he was arrested in November after threatening his daughter with a knife, no Armenian-speaking officer was at the scene.

After spending at least a day in jail, Avanesian went before a hearing officer. The two court translators were busy, so Roobina, the victim of the attack, acted as interpreter.

The police also had learned of an earlier incident, in which Avanesian had slapped one of his children and thrown a chair at another. But, according to the hearing officer, Roobina said that the problem was resolved and that everything was fine.

The Avanesians came to the United States by way of Turkey as refugees from Iran. She was a Muslim who had converted to Christianity when she married her husband. Her family was in danger of persecution because of the conversion, Mollazadeh said, which helped the Avanesians gain refugee status.

When they arrived in America, they were destitute. The rescue committee provided $2,000 to help pay rent and buy furniture, Mollazadeh said. Avanesian's sister, who lived a few blocks from the one-bedroom apartment the family rented, lent her brother $350 and often allowed his two oldest daughters to sleep at her house, police said.

The family lived in Glendale's most overcrowded neighborhood, where the population rate is more than 36,000 people per square mile, according to the 1990 Census. The city median is less than a sixth that rate.

Like many of their neighbors, the Avanesians were scraping by. In a neighborhood where more than 21 percent of the people live below poverty, the Avanesians subsisted on a $1,100 monthly cash grant from the government and $600 in food stamps.

The children were covered by Medi-Cal, and they qualified for free school lunches. But rent on the second-floor one-bedroom apartment took $700 each month, leaving just $400 a month for the family to live on.

Despite the hardships, it seemed that the family was adjusting to life in America. The children were excelling in school, learning English, making friends and earning high marks. Their mother, who had worked as a nurse in Iran, was planning to get her nursing credits transferred and go back to work when her youngest son, Roland, entered kindergarten in the fall.

Jorjik Avanesian could not find work in his field, repairing electric generators, but took odd jobs fixing cars.

Some leaders in the community said they hope the tragedy will spark some improvements in service for newly arrived Armenians.

Perhaps, Gourjian said, there will be enough money left from the funeral funds to start a shelter for battered Armenian women. Perhaps, she said, people will be more aware of the needs of their neighbors.

Sonentz-Papazian is less optimistic.

"I hope this will help change things," he said. "But people have short memories. More often than not, these tragedies lose their impact. By next week, it will be old news, and everyone will be worried about something else."

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO

Photo (1--color) Armenian Relief Society worker Louisa Gourjian describes problems faced by immigrants. (2) A sign remarks on the arson deaths of six children and their mother. (3) Manik Kavukshyan, left, and Kima Nikogosian look at job bulletins at the Armenian Relief Society in Glendale, where thousands seek help. David Crane/Daily News