Her experience in Cairo underscored the fact that female journalists often face a different kind of violence. While other forms of physical violence affecting journalists are widely covered — the traumatic brain injury ’suffered by the ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff in Iraq in 2006 was a front-page story at that time — sexual threats against women are rarely talked about within journalistic circles or in the news media.
With sexual violence, “you only have your word,” Ms. Logan said in the interview. “The physical wounds heal. You don’t carry around the evidence the way you would if you had lost your leg or your arm in Afghanistan.”
The account is harrowing, as we all knew it would be:
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: “Our local people with us said, ‘We’ve gotta get out of here.’ That was literally the moment the mob set on me.”
Some things Ms. Logan wouldn’t talk about…
“What really struck me was how merciless they were. They really enjoyed my pain and suffering. It incited them to more violence.”
Egyptian soldiers and a group of citizens saved her from the wilding of the mob of men.
Logan has decided to steer clear of the Middle East, citing the very nature of her job, which is to communicate information, putting her in danger.
One of the other things that came crashing into her reality is the oppression of women in these countries. It should never be far from our consciousness.
Ms. Logan will tell more of her story Sunday on “60 Minutes.” It will be her only interview about the horror she experienced in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.
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