Duffy reveals harrowing details of rape and kidnap ordeal
"Rape is like living murder, you are alive, but dead."
By Will Stroude
Duffy has opened up about the harrowing details of the rape and kidnap ordeal that led to her abrupt withdrawal from the spotlight.
The Welsh singer, 35, recounted her experience in a lengthy blog post in which she revealed she was drugged in her own home, taken abroad and raped.
“I’m doing this to be freed, for all of me to be freed”, she wrote.
Duffy, a three-time Brit Award winner whose 2008 debut album Rockferry was one of year’s biggest selling records in the UK, has remained largely out of the public eye since the release of her second album, 2010’s Endlessly.
In February, the musician made a rare public statement on Instagram, revealing she had been dealing with the emotional trauma of being raped and kidnapped at the hands of an unnamed perpetrator.
In her latest post, Duffy recalls the horrific details of the weeks-long abuse, explaining she didn’t go to the police because she feared for her life, and that she has spent the intervening years largely alone, processing what happened.
“It was my birthday, I was drugged at a restaurant, I was drugged then for four weeks and travelled to a foreign country”, she wote.
“I can’t remember getting on the plane and came round in the back of a travelling vehicle. I was put into a hotel room and the perpetrator returned and raped me. I remember the pain and trying to stay conscious in the room after it happened.”
Duffy continued: “I could have been disposed of by him. I contemplated running away to the neighbouring city or town, as he slept, but had no cash and I was afraid he would call the police on me, for running away, and maybe they would track me down as a missing person.
“I do not know how I had the strength to endure those days, I did feel the presence of something that helped me stay alive. I flew back with him, I stayed calm and as normal as someone could in a situation like that, and when I got home, I sat, dazed, like a zombie.
“I knew my life was in immediate danger, he made veiled confessions of wanting to kill me. With what little strength I had, my instinct was to then run, to run and find somewhere to live that he could not find.”
The Grammy Award winner added: “What happened was not only a betrayal to me, to my life, a violence that nearly killed me, it stole a lot from other people too. I was just not the same person for so long.
“Rape is like living murder, you are alive, but dead. All I can say is it took an extremely long time, sometimes feeling never ending, to reclaim the shattered pieces of me.”
Insisting that the written statement would be her last about the trauma, Duffy wrote: “I can now leave this decade behind. Where the past belongs.
“Hopefully no more ‘what happened to Duffy questions’, now you know… and I am free.”