Singer Duffy Says She Was Raped, Drugged, Held Captive

Duffy, the Welsh singer whose album Rockferry won the Grammy award for best pop vocal album in 2008, has been missing from the public eye for nearly a decade. In 2011 she decided to take a break after releasing her most recent album, 2010’s Endlessly. On Tuesday, she returned to Instagram to reveal a horrific experience: She says she was drugged, raped, and held captive.

“You can only imagine the amount of times I thought about writing this,” the post reads. “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.” According to TMZ, this is Duffy’s first post to the platform since 2017.

Duffy said she spoke with a journalist last summer, and that an interview is forthcoming. “He was kind and it felt so amazing to finally speak,” she wrote. She does not mention when the incident occurred, but says it took place “over some days.”

“The recovery took time,” Duffy wrote. “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? And slowly it unbroke.”

After closing her note, she added, “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.”