VIDEO: CBS' Lara Logan Breaks Silence On Sexual Assault: 'I Thought I Was Going To Die'
May 2 2011, Published 9:08 a.m. ET
Journalist Lara Logan broke her silence on Sunday’s 60 Minutes, about the brutal sexual assault she suffered three months ago while covering the resignation of Egypt’s then-president, Hosni Mubarak.
"I thought, ‘Not only am I going to die here, but it's going to be just a torturous death that's going to go on forever and ever and ever,’" the CBS News' chief foreign affairs correspondent told 60 Minutes on Sunday in her first on-camera discussion of the incident.
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, on February 11, after Mubarak resigned after nearly three weeks of riots, Logan and her crew "were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration" in Cairo's Tahrir Square, according to CBS. There, she suffered "a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.”
Logan said that the area was festive for about an hour -- it looked like "a party," she said -- until trouble ensued, and one of her crew members, a native Egyptian, warned her it was time to leave upon hearing an ongoing chant.
"I was told later that they were saying, 'Let's take her pants off,'" Logan said. "Before I even know what's happening, I feel hands grabbing my breasts, grabbing my crotch, grabbing me from behind.
"It's not just one person ... it's one person and another person and another person."
Logan said her attackers "literally tore my pants to shreds and I felt my underwear go," noting that she saw them taking cell phone pictures of her during the ongoing assault.
Logan said she "didn't even know that they were beating me with flagpoles and sticks and things because I couldn't even feel that: The sexual assault was all I could feel ... their hands raping me over and over and over again."
"I thought I was gonna die," Logan said, crying.
Logan said as the attack -- which lasted an excruciating 25 minutes -- progressed, her thoughts turned to surviving for the sake of her two children.
Logan said she thought, "It's about staying alive now. I have to just surrender to the sexual assault. What more can they do now?
"The only thing to fight for, left to fight for, was my life."
The mob dragged Logan’s body to a fence, where she said a group of Egyptian woman protected her. Logan said that an Egyptian soldier put her over his back and took her to safety in a tank. They took her back to her hotel and crew, she said.
Dozens of journalists -- including CNN ace Anderson Cooper -- were attacked covering the demonstrations earlier this year. An Egyptian reporter died after he was shot during one of the protests.
Logan, 40, has been with the network since 2002.
Watch the video on RadarOnline.com
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