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It was a great music industry mystery: after becoming one of the biggest pop stars of the 2000s with her debut album, 2008’s Rockferry, the Welsh pop star Duffy vanished from the public eye. In 2020, she revealed what had happened to her: in 2010, she said, she had been drugged, kidnapped and taken to another country where she was subject to violent abuse and raped.
Duffy, real name Aimée Anne Duffy, 41, will tell that story in depth for the first time in a new documentary, produced by Disney+ and Hulu Original, with production set to begin soon. A press release promises “new, unprecedented access” to the Mercy singer, who will tell her entire life story, as well as interviews with friends, family and music industry associates.
The documentary’s director, Gill Callan, said: “Duffy’s life has been shaped by success and fame, but equally by pain, defiance and an irrepressible sense of self. I’m drawn to the tension between vulnerability and confidence in her story and how a person can be deeply affected by their experiences, yet still find a powerful, expressive voice that is unmistakably hers.”
In an Instagram post in February 2020, Duffy said that she was “raped and drugged and held captive over some days”. She did not say when the attack happened, but said being reached by a journalist prompted her to share her story. She invited fans to send questions that she would answer in an interview, but none materialised.
“It’s harder than I thought,” the singer said a month later in a statement read out on Jo Whiley’s BBC Radio 2 show as she unveiled Something Beautiful, her first new song since the ordeal. A second track, River in the Sky, came a few months later.
In between, having deleted the Instagram post, Duffy detailed her experiences in an essay on her website. She said she was drugged at a restaurant on her birthday, then held captive in her own home and taken abroad. “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.”
She said the perpetrator made “veiled confessions of wanting to kill me”. She said that she escaped by “fleeing” and added that she “cannot remember getting home”. She indicated that the perpetrator was “still at large”.
After initially fearing contacting the police, she reported her story after someone threatened to “out her”. She said she was at “high risk of suicide” after the event and had spent “almost 10 years completely alone”, estranged from her family. What happened to her, she wrote, “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.” Thanks to a psychologist, she said she was now able to “leave this decade behind”.
Rape Crisis praised Duffy for sharing her story. “Rape is still a very under-discussed, misunderstood and under-reported crime, so when someone like Duffy speaks out in such a powerful way it can make other survivors feel a little bit less alone and less ashamed – which is a very common emotion, no matter how unfounded,” said the organisation’s Katie Russell.
At a keynote address, Disney+ head of content for Europe Angela Jain said: “She has entrusted us with her story, so we really have a huge responsibility to handle this with care and sensitivity, because she’s speaking about what happened to her for the first time.”
