Duffy told her full story of rape and captivity: “Nobody who reveals such a wound feels elated, only release”

Trigger warning: This post discusses rape.

In February, “Mercy” singer Duffy revealed on Instagram that she had been “raped, drugged, and held captive,” the trauma of which led her to retreat from the public sphere for almost a decade. In a personal blog post published on Sunday, April 5th, the Grammy Award winner went into greater detail about her harrowing experience. And Duffy also talked about what telling her story means to her and her future.

In the wake of her abduction, Duffy said that she considered changing her name and “disappearing to another country” to start a new life. But she chose to tell her story now, she wrote, because “in hiding, in not talking, I was allowing the rape to become a companion…I no longer wanted to feel that intimacy with it, a decade of that intimacy has been destructive.”

“I had to set myself free,” Duffy wrote about telling her story.

She added that she had been “warned by some I know” not to share her story at all. “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,” Duffy wrote. She also said that “no one, utterly no one” knew what had happened, including her record label and other people with whom she worked in the music industry.

But Duffy said she was determined to reclaim her “human rights,” and “to experience a life with autonomy from fear.” More simply, she wrote, she was recently struck with the thought that she “just can’t bear the weight of this anymore.”

Then, she went on to recount her experience, which began when she was allegedly drugged at a restaurant on her birthday. Duffy said she was taken abroad and held in captivity before returning to her home with her captor. (For her full story, you can read her essay, but we won’t go into detail here.)

In the aftermath of her release, Duffy wrote that the first person she told was a psychologist, months later, who was an expert in complex trauma and sexual violence. “I have no idea how I was so lucky to find her all those years ago,” she said. Otherwise, she said that she isolated herself from others, including her family, and “moved five times in the immediate three years after, never feeling safe from the rapist.”

Recently, she returned home to Wales. There, she had “the realization that [the] very thing that hurt me, will become the very thing that heals me.”

I faced a deeply inhumane experience; only humanity can heal that,” Duffy wrote.

Duffy wrote that, during the recovery process, she has found solace in understanding “the mind’s science” as it pertains to trauma, as well as a gratitude practice and actively “seeking love in everything, even a teacup.” And she thanked her fans and followers for the supportive comments and messages that she received after posting her original Instagram announcement. “I did not speak to seek friends, but the kindness was an emotional experience for me,” she wrote.

Finally, Duffy said that a permanent return to music “remains to be seen.” But it “meant a lot” to her to unofficially release her song “Something Beautiful”—the first song she has released publicly since her hiatus from music—on BBC2 Radio in March.

Whether or not she resumes a public career in music, sharing her story has allowed Duffy to “leave this decade behind”—and in this new decade, she wrote, “I am free.”

If you are a sexual assault survivor and need help, you can call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 to speak to a trained counselor. You can also chat online with a counselor here. Both services are available 24/7.