CALGARY- The victim of a frightening sexual assault in southeast Calgary is sharing her story, in hopes it will prevent the same thing from happening to another woman.
On July 11, Brenda Lambert ended up at the Overtime Sports Bar in Forest Lawn after a night out. She remembers leaving the bar, and was then attacked.
“I don’t remember anything leading up to the attack, I just remember that he was on top of my body and my skirt was up to my stomach,” Lambert says. “I was just hitting him and screaming for help.”
She says no one would help her despite pleas for help, and she was forced to walk home alone, and barefoot.
“At one point someone had said they could hear me screaming, and I was like’ that was me, you didn’t think to go check it out?’ It was just like nobody, nobody came.
“I wouldn’t want this to happen to another girl where she’s asking for help and nobody helps her. It’s not a very nice feeling, it makes you feel very alone and it questions your self worth as a person.”
The 33-year-old called police the next morning, and an investigation has been launched.
“It’s very frustrating and it’s really disappointing that you’ve kind of lost faith in humanity at this point,” says Lambert’s cousin Hailey Lambert. “A girl screaming, it doesn’t matter what they’re screaming for. If they’re screaming fire, screaming rape, you always check it out.”
Police tell Global News that they don’t believe it was a random attack.
“This is someone the victim had known prior to the offense,” explains A/S/Sgt. Sean Chartrand. “However, we’re still trying to figure out how long prior to the offense they knew each other.”
The Overtime Sports Bar is cooperating with the investigation, and released the following statement to Global News:
“Despite staff giving their best efforts to get the victim a safe ride home prior to the incident, she was sexually assaulted in the Petro Canada parking lot nearby. We are extremely sorry to hear of this incident, and offer our condolences to the victim for what she had to go through.
Overtime is a bar that was built by our patrons, our friends and our neighbours. We consider each person who walks through our doors to be family and therefore we are deeply saddened to hear of this news. We will continue to work with the Calgary Police Service as they investigate this issue and offer our support to the victim during these difficult circumstances.”
-With files from Tracy Nagai
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