Duffy has shared a harrowing account of being kidnapped and raped.
Duffy
The 35-year-old singer - who claimed in February she had stayed away from the spotlight for 10 years after being "raped, drugged, and held captive" - she spent four weeks barely conscious and has no idea what happened in that month until her attacker took her to an undisclosed "foreign country", where he sexually assaulted her in a hotel room.
She wrote on her website: "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"I was stuck with him for another day, he didn't look at me, I was to walk behind him, I was somewhat conscious and withdrawn.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...
"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.
"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.
"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."
The 'Something Beautiful' singer didn't feel "safe" enough to go to police as she worried her attacker would find her and "kill" her, but confirmed the incident "is on record" as she told police following two other separate moments.
She explained: "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 wrote she was "warned" she'd be "finished" if she ever made her ordeal public - admitted she considered taking on a new identity and fleeing overseas.
She wrote: "I also considered and explored human rights laws to change my name off public record and disappear to another country and maybe become a florist or something, so that I could put the past behind with a new life and not trouble anyone else with it, to carry it alone.
"Because, although I was almost unfindable, I daydreamed of having a different haircut, a new name, a boyfriend, and become completely forever forgotten. As time went on it then became about realising, I can't keep hiding, as thrilling as coffee in Paris seems."
But the 'Mercy' singer ultimately didn't want to do an "immense disservice" to herself by "deleting" her previous life, having already lost so much.
She wrote: "Rape stripped me of my human rights, to experience a life with autonomy from fear. It has already stolen one third my of life. Deep down I do know it would have been a shame and done such an immense disservice to my existence to just delete myself and forget what I had experienced in music publicly."
In the aftermath of her kidnapping, Duffy - whose full name is Aimee Duffy - spent weeks without seeing anyone and couldn't strike up new relationships because she felt "alive, but dead".
She wrote: "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...
"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...
"After the rape and kidnaping I had a handful of romantic experiences and each one would 'love bomb' me and want the person on the album cover, while I was just a person hurt. It was futile.
"You may wonder where was my family? Those who wanted to help - were just too far away. The toll of me hiding, this last decade, also meant I was estranged from 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.
"Rape is like living murder, you are alive, but dead. All I can say is it took an extremely long time, sometimes feeling never ending, to reclaim the shattered pieces of me."
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