Pop star Duffy has said she retreated from the public eye after she was “raped, drugged and held captive” for several days.
The singer, whose debut album Rockferry reached number one in the UK with hits such as Warwick Avenue and Mercy, explained that while the “recovery took time”, she is “OK and safe now”, in an emotional Instagram post.
The Welsh singer said that many of her fans have wondered “what happened to me, where did I disappear to and why”.
In a post to her 65,000 Instagram followers she wrote: “The truth is, and please trust me I am OK and safe now, I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days.
“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.”
Duffy added: “You wonder why I did not use my voice to explain my pain?
“I did not want to show the world the sadness in my eyes.”
She also asked her followers to support her “to make this a positive experience”.
The singer shared details of the attack in an interview with a journalist during the summer who she credited for making her feel able to publicly discuss the ordeal.
She said that “you can only imagine the amount of times I thought about writing this”.
Duffy released her second album, Endlessly in 2010 and has been largely absent from the public eye since despite reaching Adele-like success with her first record.
