Duffy says she cut off all her hair and moved house five times over fears rapist would kill her after horrifying ordeal
WEEKS after singer Duffy emerged from a ten-year silence to reveal she had been kidnapped and raped, she has posted a 3,600- word essay online about the horrors she endured.
And the 35-year-old Welsh star told how her four weeks in brutal captivity left her close to committing suicide.
Duffy, who burst into the spotlight with her bestselling album Rockferry in 2008, wrote: “Rape is like living murder, you are alive, but dead.
“Rape stripped me of my human rights. It has already stolen one third of my life.”
In the emotional piece, she recalled the moment her life changed for ever at an unspecified point during the past ten years.
She wrote: “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.
“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 I was stuck with him for another day, he didn’t look at me, I was to walk behind him, I was somewhat conscious and withdrawn.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.”
Duffy — full name Aimee Anne Duffy — continued: “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.”
After her ordeal, Duffy became a recluse and said she struggled to speak to anyone about what had happened to her.
She added: “After it happened, someone I knew came to my house and saw me on my balcony staring into space, wrapped in a blanket. 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.
“In the aftermath I would not see someone, a physical soul, for sometimes weeks at a time.
“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.”
But as the months wore on, Duffy turned to professional help as she grew increasingly suicidal.
She said: The first person I ever told was a psychologist, a leading expert in the UK in complex trauma and sexual violence.
“Without her I may not have made it through. I was high risk of suicide in the aftermath.
“I could not look her in the eyes for the first eight or so sessions. The thought of recovering was almost impossible.”
Duffy did not report her ordeal to the police over fears that her attacker would return to kill her.
But she felt forced to tell them after someone she knew threatened to tell her story publicly in a blackmail bid. And she contacted police again at some point in the past ten years after her home was targeted by armed raiders.
She wrote: “I 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.
“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.”
Duffy, who was born in Bangor, North Wales, to mum Joyce and dad John, became estranged from her family following the ordeal as she shut herself away from those she was closest to.
She added: “Those who wanted to help were just too far away. The toll of me hiding, this last decade, also meant I was estranged from them all.
“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.
“All I can say is it took an extremely long time, sometimes feeling never-ending, to reclaim the shattered pieces of me.”
During the past ten years Duffy has barely returned to the public eye. After the release of her second album Endlessly in 2011, which failed to repeat the success of Rockferry, she went on to play American singer Timi Yuro in 2015 film Legend.
Otherwise she was rarely seen in public, and removed all traces of her life from social media.
In her moving online account she recalled how she managed her recovery, including moving house five times in three years, in a bid to stop her attacker from ever finding her.
Poignantly, she called her essay Fifth House, in a nod to her surroundings, which she says has played a huge part in her recovery.
She said: “It took so long for me to speak because after I was raped and held captive, I fled.
“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 fifth house, it was not as confined as the other houses, where I grieved silently. 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 fifth house, I felt safe. I feel safe now.”
Since starting her recovery Duffy has reconciled with her family.
And after her initial revelation on social media in February, she sent a surprise new track, Something Beautiful, to Radio 2 DJ Jo Whiley, who played it on her show on March 19. Jo also read out an email from the singer saying the track would not be released officially.
However, Duffy later said she had given a lot of thought to returning to music and said she wouldn’t allow her future career to be dictated by her attacker.
She said: “I believe that not singing is killing me. I’ve come to realise I can’t erase myself, I live in my being, so I have to be honest and have faith in the outcome.
"I owe it to myself to release a body of work some day, though I very much doubt I will ever be the person people once knew.
“My music will be measured on the merit of its quality and this story will be something I experienced and not something that describes me.”
Duffy also said she wanted to help others who had survived sexual assault and violence.
She wrote, addressing fellow victims: “I am no longer ashamed that something deeply hurt me. 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, who have suffered the same.
When the ordeal happened it destabilised me so severely, it took years and years, around 90,000 hours. I sometimes didn’t know how I could make it through, it was hard and almost impossible. But I got here, as will you.
“I have been very warned by some I know not to tell you what I am about to tell you.
"Some alluded that I would pretty much be finished in whatever chances I have to make music publicly again, some have said I would be scorned by the public, another said I would be called selfish that the rapist is still at large.
“It has served to delay my talking by weeks, and me just lying in bed looking at the ceiling, trying to find meaning. If I destroy my future, I do it to honour my past.
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“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.”
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