When Lara Logan, CBS News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent and correspondent for 60 Minutes was attacked by a mob and sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, last February, Jeff Fager, CBS News chairman and executive producer of 60 Minutes, had fears about how she would make it out of the attack.
“She, really, in many ways should not have survived that attack,” he told the New York Daily News. “I was looking at it from the worst-case scenario. When you heard her describe it, it seemed that way. I was concerned with her health and would she come back.”
Logan described the event to 60 Minutes last spring: I didn’t even know that they were beating me with flagpoles and sticks and things, because the sexual assault was all I could feel, their hands raping me over and over and over again. … I was in no doubt in my mind that I was in the process of dying.”
The mob also attempted to rip off parts of her scalp, she said. And as Logan prepares her return to 60 Minutes, she is also preparing to speak up about her bout with postraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) since the February incident.
“People don’t really know that much about [PTSD],” she told the Daily News. “There’s something called latent PTSD. It manifests itself in different ways. I want to be free of it, but I’m not. It doesn’t go away. It’s not something I keep track of. It’s not predictable like that. But it happens more than I’d like.”
Logan, who is married and has two children, said having a strong support system has been key to helping herself down the long road to recovery.
“Your family is critical,” she said. “You can’t do it alone. My husband is a great support. He understands, he doesn’t hide from it, from what happened. He knows everything, more than anyone, what they did to me.”
Read Counseling Today’s February cover story, “A calming presence,” about how counselors help trauma survivors feel sense of safety and stabilization even before therapy begins.
Heather Rudow is a staff writer for Counseling Today. Email her at hrudow@counseling.org.