CBS reporter Lara Logan describes sexual attacks

CBS 

By Kelly Kennedy, USA TODAY

Handout file photo shows CBS correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo's Tahrir Square moments before she was assaulted.'--PHOTO:REUTERS

WASHINGTON — Two months after a brutal attack during the protests in Cairo, CBS reporter Lara Logan says "there was no doubt in my mind that I was in the process of dying." And despite the horrific ordeal, Logan plans to return to reporting in trouble spots.

"I am so much stronger," she says in a release from CBS News, marking her first public statements since the repeated sexual attacks by a mob in Cairo. Logan, who has returned to work, will tell her story on CBS' 60 Minutes this Sunday.

She hopes her story will help others who have been sexually assaulted, especially other female journalists.

On Feb. 11, Logan was in Cairo covering the city's celebration of the regime change in Egypt. She was conducting interviews in Tahrir Square when she became separated from her crew and was sexually and physically assaulted by a mob.

"I thought not only am I going to die, but it's going to be just a torturous death that's going to go on forever," Logan said. In an interview with The New York Times, she said her clothes were "torn to pieces," and that "for an extended period of time, they raped me with their hands."

A group of Egyptian women and soldiers rescued her.

Logan has spent much time covering conflicts, including Iraq and Afghanistan, which are often hostile environments for Western women.

"Lara Logan is an extremely talented, courageous journalist," says Alicia Shepard, an ombudsman at NPR. "Her gender should have nothing to do with whether she should cover a war. It should be up to Lara Logan."

"Covering war, conflict and political upheaval all entails possible physical danger, and we have to be more careful," says Hun Shik Kim, who covered Iraq and now teaches at the University of Colorado. "We used to be considered neutral observers, but the level of hostility toward foreign journalists is quite high."

Logan said she does not intend to give any more interviews about the attack.

"I don't want this to define me," she told the Times.