When I was in Paris in July this year Ingrid Bentacourt was rescued. Her face was all over the local newspapers and France and President Sarkozy were celebrating. Until then I have never heard of Bentacourt. I had no history or context to the rescue. But her time in captivity for 6 years spoke of the triumph of the human spirit. In particular the fact that her father died when she was in captivity and how this led her to turn away from God for a year and then make peace with God later are deeply instructive of character building in times of crisis. BBC's Alan Johnston recently did a beautiful interview with her that truly touched my soul. Alan was captured and held captive for four months while he was a journalist in Gaza. He was interviewing Ingrid for the BBC Interview. The empathy and love between two souls that shared a horrific time in captivity which included being chained and humiliated was deeply touching. Ingrid said that she was suicidal during the time in captivity - only the memory of her mother kept her alive. Alan said something similar - the dignified statement that his father made to the media which he watched with his kidnappers on TV was what gave him the strength to pull through.
The other thing that really touched me was that the interview unlike most interviews we see today was unvarnished. The journalist was not out to corner the interviewee and the interviewee was not heavily prepped and preened by PR professionals. There was this implicit trust and mutual respect, almost admiration, between Alan and Ingrid. And it was beautiful to watch and brought home the power of journalism and media to be truly a force for good.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/interview/interview_20081219-2332b.mp3
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