Duffy has released a full account of her kidnapping ordeal in her own words - here’s what it says

Award-winning singer, Duffy, has released a written account of a terrifying ordeal, during which she was drugged, kidnapped and raped.

Writing on her website, duffywords.com, the Welsh born singer opened up about the kidnapping, which caused her to end her music career and remove herself from the spotlight after having released two internationally successful albums.

Starting the account by addressing the current coronavirus pandemic Duffy, born Aimee Anne Duffy, writes, “It troubles me that this story contains sorrow, when so many need the opposite of that at this time.”

What happened during the attack?

According to Duffy’s account, the attack began at a restaurant on her birthday, where she was drugged, before being taken back to her own home. There she was continuously drugged for a period of four weeks, but she explains that she cannot remember if she had been raped by this point. 

In her harrowing account, she discloses that she was later taken to a foreign country while still in a drug-induced state, where she finally awoke in the back of a moving vehicle, before being raped in a hotel room. 

Later in the online statement the singer recounts, “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“I was stuck with him for another day, he didn’t look at me, I was to walk behind him, I was somewhat conscious and withdrawn.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 contemplated running away to the neighbouring city or town, as he slept, but had no cash.”

The singer decided not to escape as she was in fear of her life, stating, “I could have been disposed of by him.”

Eventually, Duffy says the attacker flew her back home to the UK.

Blackmail and a break-in

However, even once she arrived home, the singer’s ordeal didn't come to an end, as the perpetrators' threats to her life kept her from seeking help. 

Duffy writes she “knew” her life was in “immediate danger” and she “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,” she explained.

Duffy states that during the decade since the attack, while she has remained out of the public eye, she was blackmailed by someone who threatened to reveal her ordeal to the press, and was also the victim of a home invasion. After these events, she decided to tell the police about her attack.

 “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,” Duffy wrote.

While she has detailed her ordeal, the singer has decided not to disclose the identity of her attacker, saying, “The identity of the rapist should be only handled by the police, and that is between me and them.”

‘Tired of hiding’

Revealing why she has now chosen to come forward with her story the singer explains that she “thought the public disclosure of my story would utterly destroy my life, emotionally, while hiding my story was destroying my life so much more.”

However, she says was “tired of hiding”, adding, “What is also hard to explain is that, in hiding, in not talking, I was allowing the rape to become a companion. Me and it living in my being, I no longer wanted to feel that intimacy with it, a decade of that intimacy has been destructive.”

The aftermath of these events in the last decade have understandably seriously affected the singer’s mental health, and caused her to isolate herself from friends and family.

“I would not see someone, a physical soul, for sometimes weeks and weeks and weeks at a time, remaining alone,” she said.

Addressing the pandemic

In her writing, Duffy ties her experience of isolation and her use of mindfulness to help her mental health with the nation's current situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, stating, “The brain's ‘dorsal anterior cingulate cortex’, which registers physical pain, is activated when we are isolated. And isolation is a small price to pay for saving lives, therefore we must be strong in the face of it [...] never has mindfulness been so vital as it is now.”

‘No more ‘what happened to Duffy questions’

She finishes her post on a hopeful and empowering note, “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.”