Artist News

Duffy says horrific assault led her to withdraw from public

By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 26 February 2020

The musician Duffy has published a post on Instagram in which she explains that her decision to step back from the public spotlight and her music career was the result of a horrific assault which saw her “drugged and raped and held captive over some days”.

Following the huge success of her 2008 debut album ‘Rockferry’, Duffy released a second LP in 2010, but then went on a long career hiatus except for her involvement in the 2015 film ‘Legend’.

In the post on her verified Instagram account, Duffy writes: “Many of you wonder what happened to me, where did I disappear to and why”. She then explains: “The truth is, and please trust me I am OK and safe now, I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days”.

She goes on: “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?”, she then asks. “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”.

Explaining why she had decided to speak about the assault now, she says: “A journalist contacted me, he found a way to reach me and I told him everything this past summer. He was kind and it felt so amazing to finally speak”.

She concludes by writing that she would be “posting a spoken interview” in the coming weeks and invited fans to submit questions saying, “I would like to answer them … if I can”.