60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan opens up about cancer, sex assault and Benghazi story

“Life has a way of beating the crap out of all of us and my life is no exception,” says the 46-year-old, who will be in Toronto on Monday May 8 speaking at the Unique Lives and Experiences lecture series at Roy Thomson Hall.

The Star recently caught up with the South African-born journalist. The following has been edited and condensed.

When you reflect on the last six years — being sexually assaulted by a mob of more than 200 men while reporting, a breast cancer diagnosis and the fallout from the Benghazi report, which resulted in you taking a temporary leave of absence from the show — what are your thoughts?

I’m exhausted. It’s best captured in what a general said to me: ‘Great to see you on 60 Minutes (again).’ And I said ‘I’m back on my feet.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Lara, you’ve never been off your feet.’ That was very important for me to remember.

Where did you find the strength to get through it?

When you can look in the mirror and know you never lied to anyone, never strayed from who you are, never failed to stand up for what you believe in, you can find the strength to overcome anything. And you remember that everyone struggles in life.

I’ve read that you’re still dealing with physical scars from the 2011 attack in Egypt.

Yes. And ongoing physical health problems because of severe pelvic pain. I have arthritis in my right hand — that was from holding onto our security person for as long as I could, because he was screaming, ‘If you let go you’re going to die.’ The next morning my hand was still clenched and I had to force my fingers open. I treat (the arthritis) with steroid injections every few months. With the pelvic pain, doctors have tried to isolate the causes. I had a hysterectomy, which failed to heal.

What’s helped more than anything is a pain specialist who can reach pelvic muscles very deep inside the body — muscles that hold onto the trauma and the stress. When people are inside your body — with hands, sticks, flagpoles — tearing frantically at your insides, your muscles respond to that level of trauma and violence in a certain way.

Emotionally, how do you recover from that?

Recovery is not erasing all of your memory. It doesn’t mean leaving it all behind. We have this idea that the person we were before is the whole person and after we’re left in pieces, and if we could just rebuild the whole we could say ‘We’ve recovered.’ Recovery, for me, is that I’ll never return to who I was before. That’s OK. It’s taking back as much of myself from those people as I can and making peace with that.

I wouldn’t change anything about my life — I mean that about Egypt. There are mothers, fathers, men and women, some children, who have said to me, ‘Because you were willing to stand up, without shame, and talk about what happened to you, I was able to tell my mother, or husband or wife, about being raped.’ So the scars are worth it. I struggle physically and emotionally and I live with memories that are hard, but they don’t haunt every waking moment. I have a strong husband who can handle it when I say, ‘When you touch me like that it makes me think of Egypt. I just need a moment, or I can’t do this right now.’ And he gets it. We’ve found a way to live with that.

In 2012 you were diagnosed with breast cancer, underwent a lumpectomy and six weeks of radiation. How did you manage?

It’s a dark point in my memory. My daughter was 1, and my son was 2. I really struggled to come to terms with cancer. I called my sister from the hospital, one day after radiation, and said ‘I feel like I’m letting down all the people who love me. I’m so depressed, I don’t know how to be positive and I just want to cry.’ My sister said, ‘It’s OK to cry. You can be depressed. You’re 41, you have two babies, and you have cancer.’ Once she set me free like that, made it OK not to be coping and admit that I was struggling, then I began to rebuild.

How’s your health now?

It’s good. I’m still in remission. I live a little bit with that fear because you’re 30 per cent more likely, once you’ve had breast cancer at a young age, to get it again.

A year later, in 2013, you apologized for a 60 Minutes report on the Benghazi attack, which included an ex-security officer whose account was later discredited.

That was devastating and frustrating. There was so much misinformation and that was hard because you don’t ever get to answer your critics when you’re under attack. When you’re dealing with a person who has a security clearance, who’s been vetted by the U.S. State Department and put in charge of diplomatic security in a very hostile unstable place, there are certain things that go with that. He was one of three people — the substance of our story did not lie with him. And yet he was what everyone focused on and once there were doubts about parts of his story that he wasn’t around to answer questions about, we didn’t have a choice (but to retract the story).

You started at the local newspaper in Durban, South Africa, at 17 and went on to have a remarkable career. What challenges did you face as a war reporter because you’re female?

I always felt like there was a double standard. I felt like it was always harder to be taken seriously by your own (in the industry), than by the people I was with. The people on the ground, fighting those wars, most of them want to be understood and want their voices heard. It was hard to be taken seriously as a young woman, especially one who was feminine — often I felt like that was the bigger battle. It was almost easier to survive Shock and Awe in Baghdad than it was that.

When I started reporting from Afghanistan, and places like that, as a young foreign correspondent, it was frowned upon to be feminine and sexy. There were a few courageous women who helped open some doors, but the last door no one had opened was that it’s OK to be feminine — and you can be taken seriously. You don’t have to try and be manly and hide your femininity to do that job well.

The bureau chief in London at CNN told me years ago, ‘Nobody looking like you will be taken seriously on television in hard news reporting. Go cut your hair.’ I nearly walked into a hair salon. Then I was like, ‘What am I doing? This is who I am.’

A year and a half ago you cut back on your hours at 60 Minutes and moved from Washington D.C. to Texas. Why?

I looked at my children — my son is dyslexic — and realized I needed to be there. I cut back and moved to Texas, because my husband is from there and I wanted to be with family. It’s the greatest thing in the world to live in a beautiful tiny town in the hill country and still do this job.

Tickets for Unique Lives with Lara Logan at Roy Thomson Hall on May 8 at 7:30 p.m. are $40 —$88. Go to uniquelives.com/Toronto or call 416-872-4255.