Grammy-Winning Singer Duffy Says She Was ‘Raped, Drugged, and Held Captive’

Welsh singer Duffy arrives at the Brit awards at the Earl's Court exhibition centre in London on Feb. 18, 2009. Leon Neal/AFP via Getty Images

A Welsh pop singer who disappeared from the public eye following a successful music career in the UK and United States has alleged she was drugged, held captive, and raped by an unidentified person.

Aimee Duffy, known simply by her stage name of Duffy, said in an Instagram post shared on Feb. 26 that her recovery from the traumatic incident “took time.”

“Many of you wonder what happened to me, where did I disappear to and why,” she wrote. “A journalist contacted me, he found a way to reach me, and I told him everything this past summer.

“The truth is, and please trust me I am OK and safe now, I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days.”

Duffy added that she had thought about speaking out about the alleged incident a number of times but that now felt like the “right time,” before promising to share more details about the alleged event in the following weeks with a spoken interview.

“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,” the singer said. It is not clear if Duffy reported the alleged incident to the police.

The interview will be the singer’s first in several years after being notably absent from the public eye since her second album “Endlessly” failed to gain traction in 2010. She did, however, release three songs for the “Legend” soundtrack, a movie she appeared in with Tom Hardy in 2015.

Duffy’s debut album “Rockferry,” which was released in 2008, proved to be a massive hit, becoming the fourth best-selling album worldwide and the UK’s biggest selling album that year.

It went on to reach number one in six countries from New Zealand to Sweden, went seven times platinum, and won her three Brit Awards and a Grammy. In the United States, the album peaked at the number 4 on the Billboard 200.

The singer initially launched her music career in 2003 when she appeared on Welsh talent show “Wawffactor.” Despite coming second on the show, she later met Jeannette Lee of Rough Trade Records, who became her manager and introduced her to Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. He soon became her guitarist and bandmate, and four years later she signed a record deal with A&M Records.

Years later in 2014, after disappearing from the spotlight, Butler told the Sunday Times newspaper that the singer “went off the rails and it all went pear-shaped for her.”

Duffy herself also admitted to struggling with her quick rise to fame, telling Esquire in 2003 she had to “turn down the noise.”

“I thought, ‘I’m going to slow all this right down.' It’s only in the silence you can hear the truth, so I had to turn down the noise. I was losing sight of what all this was about. It all got so complex, such responsibility,” she said.

“I was serenading people to sleep, not running NASA. Suddenly I was a product, an enterprise, a businesswoman. But mostly I wanted to be human.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Duffy for comment on her post.