Lara Logan: “For an extended period of time, they raped me with their hands”

The CBS News correspondent, who was viciously sexually assaulted back in February, spoke to the New York Times about her horrific ordeal:

Lara Logan thought she was going to die in Tahrir Square when she was sexually assaulted by a mob on the night that Hosni Mubarak’s government fell in Cairo.

Ms. Logan, a CBS News correspondent, was in the square preparing a report for β€œ60 Minutes” on Feb. 11 when the celebratory mood suddenly turned threatening. She was ripped away from her producer and bodyguard by a group of men who tore at her clothes and groped and beat her body. β€œFor an extended period of time, they raped me with their hands,” Ms. Logan said in an interview with The New York Times. She estimated that the attack lasted for about 40 minutes and involved 200 to 300 men.

Ms. Logan, who returned to work this month, is expected to speak at length about the assault on the CBS News program β€œ60 Minutes” on Sunday night.

[…]

The assault happened the day that Ms. Logan returned to Cairo, having left a week earlier after being detained and interrogated by Egyptian forces. β€œThe city was on fire with celebration” over Mr. Mubarak’s exit, she said, comparing it to a Super Bowl party. She and a camera crew traversed Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the celebrations, interviewing Egyptians and posing for photographs with people who wanted to be seen with an American journalist.

β€œThere was a moment that everything went wrong,” she recalled.

As the cameraman, Richard Butler, was swapping out a battery, Egyptian colleagues who were accompanying the camera crew heard men nearby talking about wanting to take Ms. Logan’s pants off. She said: β€œOur local people with us said, β€˜We’ve gotta get out of here.’ That was literally the moment the mob set on me.”

Mr. Butler, Ms. Logan’s producer, Max McClellan, and two locally hired drivers were β€œhelpless,” Mr. Fager said, β€œbecause the mob was just so powerful.” A bodyguard who had been hired to accompany the team was able to stay with Ms. Logan for a brief period of time.

β€œFor Max,” the producer, β€œto see the bodyguard come out of the pile without her, that was one of the worst parts,” Mr. Fager said. He said Ms. Logan β€œdescribed how her hand was sore for days after β€” and the she realized it was from holding on so tight” to the bodyguard’s hand.

β€œMy clothes were torn to pieces,” Ms. Logan said.

She declined to go into more detail about the assault but said: β€œWhat really struck me was how merciless they were. They really enjoyed my pain and suffering. It incited them to more violence.”

She and CBS News are using what she went through to raise awareness of sexual assaults that happen to other female reporters but that ‘are rarely talked about within journalistic circles or in the news media’ according to the NYT. Her interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes airs at 7 pm ET on Sunday.

As much as I think it’s great that she’s speaking out about what she went through in an effort to help give more attention to the similar experiences other women journalists have gone through, I have serious doubts as to whether the underlying issue surrounding what happened – which is the anti-female culture that is Islam (as I and my co-blogger have discussed in detail here many times) will get the much-needed attention that it deserves. Female journalists report all over the world in the middle of crowded streets full of demonstrators, but they’re rarely subjected to sexual assaults like the one Logan suffered through.

Yes, the issue of sexual crimes against female journalists needs to be addressed strongly and condemned roundly, but so do the root causes of why sexual crimes against women happen so often in Middle Eastern countries – where the assaults are not considered “crimes” at all but instead “rights”… according to Islamic law. But to do that means the dangeous political correctness that has prevented a worldwide brutally honest discussion as to the inherently evil “religion” that we know as Islam would have to be thrown by the wayside, and that’s not going to happen, because too many politicos and other prominent public figures have either have turned an ignorantly blind eye to the evils of the Islamic “faith”, and/or have a vested political interest in pandering to the Islamic community and assorted PC types both home and abroad who really believe Islam is a “religion of peace” – contra to extensive evidence that points in the opposite direction.

Maddening.

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