Sexual assault victim forced to share same car with attacker while travelling to court appearances

When Angela Cardinal was sexually assaulted at knife point in 2014, she thought the worst of her ordeal was over. She was wrong.

After reporting her rape to local authorities, Ms Cardinal was forced to spend five nights in a jail cell next to her attacker while she testified against him.

Judge Raymond Bodnarek ordered Ms Cardinal into a provisional detention centre to ensure she appeared at preliminary trial. At the time of her testimony, the aboriginal Canadian was homeless, and the judge said she appeared “clearly agitated and aggressive”.

A review of the case, however, found Ms Cardinal had followed police orders perfectly, and had never lied about her whereabouts or attempted to leave town.

“One of the questions that keeps me up at night is whether it would have been the case that if this woman was Caucasian, and housed, and not addicted, whether this would have happened to her,” Alberta Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley said at a news conference.

Instead, Ms Cardinal – who was named by Canadian media after her death – was kept in shackles throughout her own trial; housed in the same facility as her attacker. She remained in custody even while the trail was delayed so her attacker could receive “emergency dental work”.

On two occasions, the 28-year-old and her assailant were forced to ride to court in the same vehicle.

“I’m the victim and look at me, I’m in shackles,” Ms Cardinal told the judge. “Aren’t you supposed to commit a crime to go to jail?”

Ms Ganley has launched an investigation into the incident.

Ms Cardinal was 27 and homeless when her assailant, Lance Blanchard, found her sleeping in a public area of his apartment building. According to court records, the six-foot-seven, 205-pound convicted felon dragged Ms Cardinal to his room by her hair.

Once inside, Blanchard undressed and molested Ms Cardinal, holding her at knife point. When she fought back, Blanchard threw her to the floor and started stabbing her.

"He said he was going to make me ugly and stick me in a closet and keep me,” Ms Cardinal testified.

When authorities arrived on the scene, they found Ms Cardinal covered in bruises and lacerations. One cut on her hand required 27 stitches to close.

Ruling on her case in 2016, Justice Eric Macklin was horrified at her treatment by the court.

“Her treatment by the Justice system in this respect was appalling,” he wrote. “She is owed an apology.”

But Ms Cardinal would never get her apology. The young woman was killed in an unrelated shooting just six months after her preliminary trial. A recording of her testimony was allowed into evidence in the final proceedings against Blanchard.

Last December, Justice Macklin found Blanchard guilty of aggravated assault, kidnapping, unlawful confinement, aggravated sexual assault, possession of a weapon and threatening to cause death or bodily harm.

Still, the young woman’s case haunts Ms Ganley.

"She was the victim. We should have treated her as the victim,” she said. “It definitely speaks to a series of wrong decisions and a series of systemic failures that would have allowed us to do something like this to this young woman."