***WARNING: POTENTIALLY DISTRESSING CONTENT***
Duffy has opened up about the four-week rape and kidnap ordeal that saw her disappear from the public eye.
The Welsh singer-songwriter revealed in February that she had been drugged, kidnapped and raped - a secret she had contemplated sharing countless times across the past decade.
The 35-year-old's debut album was the UK's best-selling album of 2008, winning her three Brit Awards and a Grammy; however, she virtually disappeared after releasing her second album in 2010.
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Now, the 'Mercy' singer has gone into more detail about the traumatic experience that prompted her to vanish from the spotlight.
In a lengthy blog post, she wrote: "It was my birthday, I was drugged at a restaurant, I was drugged then for four weeks and travelled to a foreign country. 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. I was stuck with him for another day, he didn't look at me, I was to walk behind him, I was somewhat conscious and withdrawn. I could have been disposed of by him.
"I contemplated running away to the neighbouring city or town, as he slept, but had no cash and I was afraid he would call the police on me, for running away, and maybe they would track me down as a missing person. I do not know how I had the strength to endure those days, I did feel the presence of something that helped me stay alive.
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"I flew back with him, I stayed calm and as normal as someone could in a situation like that, and when I got home, I sat, dazed, like a zombie. I knew my life was in immediate danger, he made veiled confessions of wanting to kill me. With what little strength I had, my instinct was to then run, to run and find somewhere to live that he could not find.
"The perpetrator drugged me in my own home in the four weeks, I do not know if he raped me there during that time, I only remember coming round in the car in the foreign country and the escape that would happen by me fleeing in the days following that. I do not know why I was not drugged overseas; it leads me to think I was given a class A drug and he could not travel with it."
In the wake of the ordeal, Duffy - whose real name is Aimee Anne Duffy - said she didn't feel safe to go to the police because if something went wrong 'he would have killed me', and she found herself becoming isolated from the outside world.
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She said: "In the aftermath I would not see someone, a physical soul, for sometimes weeks and weeks and weeks at a time, remaining alone. I would take off my pyjamas and throw them in the fire and put on another set. My hair would get so knotted from not brushing it, as I grieved, I cut it all off.
"I was just not the same person for so long. Rape is like living murder, you are alive, but dead. All I can say is it took an extremely long time, sometimes feeling never ending, to reclaim the shattered pieces of me.
"I moved five times in the immediate three years after, never feeling safe from the rapist, I was on the run for so long."
She went on to say that she had since told police about the rape on two separate occasions, following a home invasion and a threatened blackmail. In terms of her musical career, she said she hopes to 'release a body of work someday, though I very much doubt I will ever be the person people once knew'.
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Concluding her post, she wrote: "I can now leave this decade behind. Where the past belongs. Hopefully no more 'what happened to Duffy questions', now you know ... and I am free."
You can read the full blog post here.
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