Duffy reveals harrowing details of four week rape ordeal

Singer Duffy has written about her horrific rape and kidnap ordeal, sharing details for the first time.

The Welsh singer-songwriter, 35, previously spoke about the incident in February, and said she would not give a face-to-face interview about the ordeal, and has instead now chosen to write in detail on her website.

She details how during a four week period she was drugged at a restaurant where she was celebrating her birthday, before being abducted abroad and raped, and then flown home where she was held captive in her own home.  

‘It was my birthday, I was drugged at a restaurant, I was drugged then for four weeks and travelled to a foreign country,’ Duffy writes in a lengthy entitled The 5th House.

‘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.’ 

‘I was stuck with him for another day, he didn’t look at me, I was to walk behind him, I was somewhat conscious and withdrawn. 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.’

‘The perpetrator drugged me in my own home in the four weeks, I do not know if he raped me there during that time, I only remember coming round in the car in the foreign country and the escape that would happen by me fleeing in the days following that.

‘I do not know why I was not drugged overseas; it leads me to think I was given a class A drug and he could not travel with it.’

The star, full name Aimee Anne Duffy, goes on to tell how, in the immediate aftermath, she was too terrified to go to the authorities, for fear of her attacker locating her.

She writes: ‘After it happened, someone I knew came to my house and saw me on my balcony staring into space, wrapped in a blanket. I cannot remember getting home. The person said I was yellow in colour and I was like a dead person.

‘They were obviously frightened but did not want to interfere, they had never seen anything like it. Thereafter, it didn’t feel safe to go to the police. 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. I really had to follow what instincts I had. I have told two female police officers, during different threatening incidents in the past decade, it is on record.’

She continues: ‘Once someone threatened to “out” my story and I had to tell a female police officer what information the person held about me, and why the blackmail was so frightening.

‘The second incident was when three men tried to enter my house as intruders, I told the second female officer about the rape then also. The identity of the rapist should be only handled by the police, and that is between me and them.

‘The first person I ever told was a psychologist, months later, a leading expert in the UK in complex trauma and sexual violence.

‘I have no idea how I was so lucky to find her all those years ago, her beautiful blue eyes, pink sofa, huge library, amazing brain and skill. Without her I may not have made it through. I was high risk of suicide in the aftermath.

‘She got to know me, saw me as a person, learned about me and navigated me. She did it very gently. I could not look her in the eyes for the first eight or so sessions, eye contact was something I struggled with.

‘The thought of recovering was almost impossible. In the aftermath I would not see someone, a physical soul, for sometimes weeks and weeks and weeks at a time, remaining alone.

‘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.’

Explaining her reasons for sharing her harrowing story now, Duffy says: ‘I am sharing this because we are living in a hurting world and I am no longer ashamed that something deeply hurt me, anymore.

‘I believe that if you speak from the heart within you, the heart within others will answer. As dark as my story is, I do speak from my heart, for my life, and for the life of others, whom have suffered the same.

‘I have no shame in telling you either I had spent almost ten years completely alone and it still burns my heart to write it.

‘I owe it to myself to say it, I feel obliged to explain how challenging recovering truly was and to finally disclose it. I hope it comforts you to feel less ashamed if you feel alone.’

In the end, it took for the singer to move a total of five times before she started to feel as though she’d regained some semblance of safety.

‘It took so long for me to speak because after I was raped and held captive, I fled,’ she writes. ‘I moved five times in the immediate three years after, never feeling safe from the rapist, I was on the run for so long.

‘I found somewhere to live, the 5th house, it was not as confined as the other houses, where I grieved silently, in townhouses or apartments.

‘This place I would spend solitary years to find the stability to recover, I had stopped running and relocating. I felt he could not find me in the 5th house, I felt safe. I feel safe now.’

While the star insists that she will now ‘return to quietness’ after stepping forward to share the details of her traumatic experience, she hasn’t ruled out the possibility to returning to music at some point in the future.

However, her main goal in the present is gaining closure, at least to some degree, on her decade-long anguish. 

‘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,’ she concludes.

In her original post detailing the horrifying incident, Duffy revealed she had been held captive and raped in an emotional post which has since been deleted.

The singer said she had wanted to share her experience with fans ‘so many times’.

The pop star, who hails from Nefyn in Gwynedd, Wales, said she hadn’t wanted to show the world the ‘sadness in her eyes’.

Posting on Instagram she said: ‘You can only imagine the amount of times I thought about writing this. The way I would write it, how I would feel thereafter.

‘Well, not entirely sure why now is the right time, and what it is that feels exciting and liberating for me to talk. I cannot explain it. Many of you wonder what happened to me, where did I disappear to and why’.

She said she had confided in a journalist over the summer and that it had ‘felt amazing to finally speak’ about her experience.

‘The truth is, and please trust me I am ok and safe now, I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days. Of course I survived. The recovery took time. There’s no light way to say it.

‘But I can tell you in the last decade, the thousands and thousands of days I committed to wanting to feel the sunshine in my heart again, the sun does now shine.

‘You wonder why I did not choose to use my voice to express my pain? I did not want to show the world the sadness in my eyes. I asked myself, how can I sing from the heart if it is broken?’

She went on to say that her heart ‘slowly unbroke’ and said that she would be soon posting a spoken interview and that all questions would be answered.

‘I have a sacred love and sincere appreciation for your kindness over the years. You have been friends.

‘I want to thank you for that x Duffy Please respect this is a gentle move for me to make, for myself, and I do not want any intrusion to my family. Please support me to make this a positive experience.’