Was Lara Logan Raped?
February 15, 2011
CAROLINE writes:
I’m sure you’ve heard about the Lara Logan attack and rape in Egypt. Add that to your file of women placing themselves or being placed in fantasy situations: “Gee, here I am a sexy blonde reporter babe covering a bunch of male Muslim protestors in a Muslim country. What could possibly go wrong?”
Reality must be optional for attractive liberals; after all, we’re all the same, aren’t we? We all want the same things—freedom, as G.W. Bush would have it. And underneath, everyone is really a *good* person, donchaknow? Sharia law, what’s that? According to it, I’m an infidel and inferior . . . but, but, I’m Lara Logan. I’m beautiful and liberated; I mean well, we libs love everybody.
Laura writes:
I have been unable to confirm that Logan was actually raped in the attack in Cairo on Feb.11. That seems to be the implication in the CBS official statement, which includes this description:
In the crush of the mob, [Logan] was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.
It is probable that she was raped. CBS is not being forthcoming. Is that because of the obvious irresponsibility involved in sending a beautiful woman into a dangerous crowd of Muslim male protesters? By the way, Logan is married and has a two-year-old son.
— Comments —
David Lee Mundy writes:
You have asked the wrong question. Is Lara Logan guilty of fornication? Under sharia law, if a rape victim cannot produce four male witnesses, she is guilty of fornication.
Lawrence Auster writes:
As I have often complained, the undefined quality of the term “sexual assault” has made it impossible in recent years to know whether a woman in any given attack was raped or not. While the proper meaning of “sexual assault,” as in Department of Justice statistics, is something other than rape, every police department, every media organ, uses the term differently. Some use it improperly to mean the entire range of unwanted sexual contact, from a touch to rape. Some use it properly to mean unwanted sexual contacts short of rape. Further, the people who use the term evince no awareness of the ambiguous nature of the term and make no attempt to clarify what they mean.
Also, in some cases, the term “sexual assault” is deliberately used to cover up the fact of rape. In one case in a small Virginia town where a black man had raped several elderly white women, the attacks were described by police as “sexual assaults.” This was done, a local reporter told me, to protect the privacy of the victims. However, I didn’t believe that that was the real reason. I think the real reason was to cover up the fact of a black man raping white women. When I raised this possibility with the Virginia reporter, she stopped replying to me.
As for what happened to Lara Logan, on one hand, it seems unlikely that she was raped in broad daylight in Tahrir Square; on the other hand, the WSJ reported that she was separated from her colleagues and under the power of the mob for 20 to 30 minutes, which suggest a rape could have occurred.
I would just make one practical caution. When we commenters and bloggers are telling about a news story that says a “sexual assault” occurred, we should not translate that into “rape.” We should assume, short of further information, that “sexual assault” is being used properly and means something short of rape, even as we remind readers of the ambiguous nature of the term. Sexual assault should not be automatically equated with rape, though in some instances it may turn out to have been rape.
Laura writes:
Normally sexual assault means something short of rape. That is correct. It is confusing in this case because CBS does not elaborate and say what exactly happened. Logan was later treated in a hospital.
Kathlene M. writes:
On television, heroines are depicted as tough, ball-busting, kick-boxing, man-beating babes with awesome physical powers. The Lara Logan beating and assault should remind women and girls that they are not physically as strong as men no matter how many weights women lift and kick-boxing classes they attend, and that there are dangers out there that women need to be aware of.
Caroline writes:
