Duffy Speaks Out About Rape Ordeal ‘To Help Others Who Have Suffered’

This article contains information that may be distressing for some.

Duffy{ =nofollow}has shared an account of her four-week rape ordeal, in which she says she was drugged in her own home, raped and taken to a foreign country. Duffy - whose full name is Aimee Anne Duffy - wrote that she decided to tell her story, ‘for my life, and for the life of others, who have suffered the same.’ The account – which she shared on website duffywords.com – does not name her attacker, and she said that she did not go to the police as she ‘didn’t feel safe’.

The singer first spoke about the attack a month ago on Instagram, when she explained to her followers why she disappeared after releasing her second album in 2010.

‘Rape is like living murder, you are alive, but dead,’ she wrote. ‘All I can say is it took an extremely long time, sometimes feeling never ending, to reclaim the shattered pieces of me.’

She recalled, ‘It was my birthday, I was drugged at a restaurant, I was drugged then for four weeks and travelled to a foreign country. 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.’

Duffy said that she returned to the UK, but felt in danger for her life, which stopped her from going to the police. ‘It didn't feel safe to go to the police,’ she said. ‘I felt if anything went wrong, I would be dead, and he would have killed me. I could not risk being mishandled or it being all over the news during my danger.’

The singer added that she was at ‘high risk of suicide’ following the ordeal and has spent ‘almost 10 years completely alone’. But she thanked her psychologist for helping her through the trauma.

‘I would not see someone, a physical soul, for sometimes weeks and weeks and weeks at a time, remaining alone,’ she wrote. ‘I would take off my pyjamas and throw them in the fire and put on another set. My hair would get so knotted from not brushing it, as I grieved, I cut it all off. In hiding, in not talking, I was allowing the rape to become a companion.’

She said she considered moving to another country, changing her name and appearance.

‘I thought the public disclosure of my story would utterly destroy my life, emotionally, while hiding my story was destroying my life so much more. I believe that not singing is killing me,’ she wrote. ‘So, I just have to be strong and disclose it and face all my fears head on.'

She concludes, ‘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.’

READ MORE: Duffy Is Back With Stunning New Music After Saying She Was ‘Drugged, Raped And Held Captive'