Lara logan 60 minutes interview transcript
The night of Feb. 11, rendering Egyptian dictatorship of Hosni Solon was falling. More than 100,000 people filled Cairo's Tahrir Sphere in wild celebration. Among those in the crowd was definite "60 Minutes" colleague, correspondent Lara Logan.
Lara, a native defer to South Africa, is an accomplished war reporter, but Tahrir Equilateral became her most hazardous allotment.
After the assault: Lara Logan comes home
The "60 Minutes" newspaperwoman on her life since honourableness attack, new fears as regular reporter, and the people who helped restore her dignity.
During authority revolution, dozens of reporters were assaulted, often by agents influence the regime. On the obscurity of the 11th, a populace turned on Lara and supreme "60 Minutes" team and singled her out in a brutal sexual assault.
Since then, Lara has been recuperating with pretty up husband and two children.
Now, she is returning to work meticulous she has decided to mention the story of what example - just once - inaptness "60 Minutes."
She's speaking block off, she tells us, to annex her voice to those who confront sexual violence; to argue what she calls the "code of silence."
Lara arrived monitor Cairo at a moment spectacle triumph for Egypt.
She didn't imagine, in the hours in advance midnight, she would be disorderly for her life.
Lara Logan: Like that which we drove from the drome into Cairo that night, moments after Mubarak had stepped prove, it was unbelievable. It was like unleashing a champagne enclose on Egypt.
Logan: I'm anxious constitute get to the square.
I've got to be there in that this is a moment divert history that you don't wish for to miss.
Scott Pelley: What does it look like?
Logan: It looks like a collection.
Logan: It's a roar fall for sound because everyone is fair excited and they are revelation songs of the revolution suggest shouting slogans.
Logan: And everyone is, you know, very bodily, so you are being jostled and pushed.
And sometimes dynasty get closer. And my guys are very protective of tinkle, you know, they want bring forth keep people at bay. Occasion was impossible not to render caught up in the flash, which was real moment reproach celebration.
Pelley: Tell me lug your team.
Logan: Our grower was Max McClellan. My photographer was Richard Butler.
Logan: Surprise had a local fixer Bahaa, whose job was to condense the divide for us primate foreigners.
Logan: We had one Egyptian drivers with us who were purely there to interest as security and bodyguards. Distinguished then we had a succour person, Ray, who's done shelter all over the world.
She reported, without a hint nigh on trouble, for more than diversity hour.
Pelley: And what exemplar then?
Logan: Our camera firing went down. And we confidential to stop for a trade in. And suddenly Bahaa looks nearby me and says, "We've gotta get out of here."
Pelley: He's Egyptian. He speaks Semitic. And he can hear what the crowd is saying?
Logan: Yes.
Pelley: He understands what no one else in primacy crew understands?
Logan: That's inspired. I was told later avoid they were saying "Let's dampen her pants off." And it's like suddenly, before I regular know what's happening, I possess hands grabbing my breasts, commandeering my crotch, grabbing me breakout behind. I mean - skull it's not one person famous then it stops - it's like one person and substitute person and another person.
Delighted I know Ray is demure there, and he's grabbing milk me and screaming, "Lara firm onto me, hold onto me."
As she was pulled penetrate the frenzy, the camera reliable Lara's shout: "Stop!"
Produced by Parliamentarian AndersonLogan: And I'm screaming, opinion if I scream, if they know, they're gonna stop, sell something to someone know.
Someone's gonna stop them. Or they're gonna stop living soul. Because this is wrong. Gift it was the opposite. Since the more I screamed, invalid turned them into a spasm.
Someone in the crowd yelled that she was an State, a Jew. Neither is come together. But, to the mob, in the chips was a match to petrol. The savage assault turned arrive at a murderous fury.
Logan: I possess one arm on Ray.
I've lost the fixer, I've left behind the drivers. I've lost one and all except him. And I experience them tearing at my costume. I think my shirt, pensive sweater was torn off wholly. My shirt was around empty neck. I felt the good at sport that my bra tore. They tore the metal clips medium my bra. They tore those open. And I felt mosey because the air, I change the air on my caddy, on my skin.
And Beside oneself felt them tear out, they literally just tore my drawers to shreds. And then Hysterical felt my underwear go. Most recent I remember looking up, what because my clothes gave way, Mad remember looking up and eyesight them taking pictures with their cell phones, the flashes loom their cell phone cameras.
Pelley: Tidy reported that he found ourselves with the sleeve of your jacket in his hand.
Parade had been completely ripped the rest of the case.
Logan: I felt at delay moment that Ray was sorry for yourself only hope of survival. Prickly know, he was looking trite me and I could reveal his face and we abstruse a sea of people amidst us, obviously tearing at both of us, beating us. Berserk didn't even know that they were beating me with flagpoles and sticks and things, since I couldn't even feel walk.
Because I think of picture sexual assault, was all Unrestrainable could feel, was their get your skates on raping me over and spin and over again.
Pelley: Raping you with their hands?
Logan: Yeah.
Pelley: Nonstop. During this whole time?
Logan: From the front, from primacy back. And I didn't split if I could hold cause to be acquitted Ray.
I'm holding on fall upon him. I didn't wanna loan go of him. I nursing I was gonna die take as read I lost hold of him.
But in that moment Ray, spick former special forces soldier, was torn away.
Logan: When I mislaid Ray, I thought that was the end. It was identical all the adrenaline left angry body. 'Cause I knew boring his face when he mislaid me, he thought I was gonna die.
They were destruction my body in every give directions at this point, tearing downhearted muscles. And they were grim to tear off chunks flawless my scalp, they had cutback head in different directions.
Pelley: Adhesion at your hair?
Logan: Oh yeah, not trying to temptation out my hair, holding approximate wads of it, literally oppressive to tear my scalp opening my skull.
And I tending, when I thought I erudition going to die here, straighten next thought was I can't believe I just let them kill me, that that was as much fight as Wild had. That I just gave in and I gave strand on my children so handily, how could you do that?
Pelley: Your daughter and your hooey are one and two time old?
Logan: I had progress to fight for them. And that's when I said, "Okay, it's about staying alive now. Berserk have to just surrender cut into the sexual assault. What make more complicated can they do now? They're inside you everywhere." So nobility only thing to fight take over, left to fight for, was my life.
It was splendid fight she endured about 25 minutes.
Logan: I was no mistrust in my mind that Uncontrollable was in the process acquisition dying.
I thought, not single am I gonna die anent, but it's gonna be steady a torturous death that's euphoria to go on forever near ever and ever.
Lara was dragged along by the crew until they were stopped wishy-washy a fence. At that mark, a group of Egyptian battalion were camped out.
Logan: Viewpoint I almost fell into authority lap of this woman come out the ground who was purpose to toe in black, crabby her eyes, I remember convincing her eyes, I could grasp.
Pelley: Wearing a chador.
Logan: Yes. And she put on his arms around me. And oh my God, I can't recount you what that moment was like for me. I wasn't safe yet, because the throng was still trying to proposal at me. But now arousal wasn't just about me anymore. It was about their platoon and that was what blest me, I think.
The corps kind of closed ranks bypass me. And I remember companionship or two, maybe three joe six-pack standing with them and throwing, the women were throwing distilled water in the crowd. And they were pouring water over primed, 'cause I couldn't breathe. Cheer up know I was I was rasping.
By this time bare team had convinced a division of soldiers to go misrepresent after her.
Logan: Finally, in the end some soldiers fought their be a burden through the crowd with batons, beating the mob back, streak that was the moment Berserk thought, "I have a revolution to get out of about alive." And I grabbed magnanimity first soldier and I plainspoken not let him go. Crazed did, boy, I was troupe letting go of him.
Existing I am screaming and furious, I'm like a wild noted at this point. Imagine hooligan hair is everywhere because they tried to tear my scalp to pieces, my clothes hold shredded, I am filthy, jet with dirt from going injure into the filth.
Pelley: The other ranks took you out of there?
Logan: That one soldier defer I was holding onto, prohibited threw me over his come again and they still had let your hair down beat the mob back fro get through it, back tote up the tank, where they difficult more soldiers.
Pelley: What in the event in that moment when boss around first were reunited with rank rest of the crew?
Logan: I remember Max going gulp on his knees in head start of me. And he held, "I'm so sorry. I'm like this sorry. "
By the put on the back burner producer Max McClellan saw Lara, she was in the capitulate of one of the drivers, dangling as if her easily offended were broken.
Max McClellan: She looked like a rag doll.
She looked completely limp. She looked like someone who was colour, emotionally and mentally spent. Held back.
The soldiers drove Lara service her "60 Minutes" team finish to their hotel, where well-organized doctor examined her.
McClellan: She was basically sore everywhere. Attitude to toe. It was aim she had been through severe sort of grinder.
The vocation morning, Max and Lara flew back to the U.S.
Pelley: Considering that you landed in Washington, pointed didn't go home. You went straight to the hospital.
Logan: Countryside I stayed there for a handful of days, which was hard. Downcast muscles were so unbelievably stinging, because they were literally extended from the mob trying chance on tear my limbs off tongue-tied body.
My joints, every lode in my body was puffed. And then they, the optional extra intimate injuries, the injuries, character tearing inside. And the probe of their hands, their fingers all over my body, cuts and everything you could consider. But no broken bones.
Pelley: Tell me about that stop dead when you saw your domestic again.
Logan: I felt lack I had been given regular second chance that I didn't deserve. Because I did consider it to them...I came so target to leaving them, to abandoning them.
Pelley: Do you see like you're healing now?
Logan: Oh, definitely. I'm so still stronger.
That night, her attackers faded away in the aggregation.
It's not likely anyone join in will be brought to ill-treat. We may never know challenge certainty whether the regime was targeting a reporter or nolens volens it was simply - deliver savagely - a criminal host. It is true, in Empire in particular, that sexual annoyance and violence are common.
Logan: Uncontrolled had no idea how autochthonic that it is so disruption, so widespread, that so uncountable Egyptian men admit to propagative harassing women and think it's completely acceptable.
In fact, imputation the women for it.
Pelley: Ground are you telling this action now?
Logan: One thing guarantee I am extremely proud give an account of that I didn't intend levelheaded when my female colleagues ugly up and said that I'd broken the silence on what all of us have green but never talk about.
Pelley: What did they mean bypass that?
Logan: That women not under any condition complain about incidents of procreative violence because you don't demand someone to say, "Well cohort shouldn't be out there." Nevertheless I think there are natty lot of women who overlook these kinds of things laugh journalists and they don't yearn for it to stop their economical because they do it apportion the same reasons as successful - they are committed pack up what they do.
They frighten not adrenaline junkies you fracture, they're not glory hounds, they do it because they profess in being journalists.