A visibly emotional Robyn Curnow on CNN International cannot help but reach out and just hug a very sad woman in another SA rape story.

A visibly emotional Robyn Curnow on CNN International (DStv 401), fighting back her own tears, in the end couldn't help but reach out and simply just hug the poor and desperately sad woman talking with so much conviction and emotion in her voice after the death of teenage girl Anene Booysen - raped, savagely assaulted and left for dead in the small town of Bredasdorp.

Star TV reporters don't often reach out and hug the subjects or people in their stories. But when they do, and its heartfelt and so sincere, it makes for some of the most powerful television the medium can bring into our lives.

So sad and sobbing, so bitterly crying and utterly unconsolable was the woman Robyn Curnow spoke with in the small-town of Bredasdorp today, that in the end Robyn Curnow simply reached forward and hugged her.

Robyn Curnow's own eyes started welling up when the woman who didn't even know Anene Booysen but came to plant a wooden cross in remembrance in the dry dust and sand of Bredasdorp said with a quivering voice: "I don't know what we must do, but we must do something. Otherwise there is no use in giving birth to a baby boy if men treat women lower like animals."

As the woman started to cry and just stood there in Bredasdorp hot sun, Robyn Curnow became herself a television mother and the woman started to cry on her shoulder. Robyn Curnow became the TV reporter who not only come for the story, but who listens, who shows empathy, and who - for a moment - willingly carries the collective burden of an anguished society in pain, in trying to tell a story.

"One in three men have admitted to raping in this country. What does this mean about South African society? What does this mean about the future of this society? It takes a shocking, brutal savagery like this to make it onto CNN. Ordinarily these rapes don't even make it onto the front pages of newspapers," said Robyn Curnow on CNN International.