Duffy, who had a hit in 2008 with “Mercy,” revealed Tuesday that she was drugged, raped and held captive for several days.
In a deeply personal message to her fans on Instagram, the 35-year-old Welsh singer addressed her absence from the music spotlight since the release of her sophomore album Endlessly in 2010.
“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. He was kind and it felt so amazing to finally speak.
“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.”
The singer, whose full name is Aimee Duffy, added: "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 said she has remained quiet because she wasn’t ready to share her sadness with the world. “I asked myself, how can I sing from the heart if it is broken? And slowly it unbroke,” she explained.
Duffy did not provide any specific details about her ordeal – when it happened, who her assailant is, and how she escaped. “In the following weeks I will be posting a spoken interview,” she wrote. “If you have any questions I would like to answer them, in the spoken interview, if I can.”
The singer, whose debut album Rockferry won a Grammy in 2009, spoke many times about being uncomfortable in the spotlight.
“It would be very easy to become a recluse,” she told The Telegraph in 2008. “I’m borderline on a nervous breakdown … I have sold my soul and I’m no longer anonymous, but I have to remember that the majority of people are good.”
Duffy also told WalesOnline: “All the doubts I have are of myself. Can I handle this? Do I want to disappear?”
But, in a 2010 interview with The Daily Mail, she denied she was tortured by fame. “I knew what I was getting myself into,” she said. “I’ve had the time of my life. I’ve shed a few tears along the way, but no one should feel sorry for me.”
Duffy appeared in the 2015 film Legend starring Tom Hardy and Taron Egerton and made headlines in 2012 when she escaped with her two cats and a dog from a fire at her penthouse in London.