Singer Duffy made a surprise comeback with a Garage remix of her biggest hit ‘Mercy’. The singer disappeared shortly after the song release and came back in the spotlight in 2020, almost ten years later, to reveal her experience of being kidnapped and abused after being taken to a foreign country.
Taking to Instagram to share the remix with her fans, the singer posted a video of her mouthing the lyrics to the tune, captioning it “Some of you asked if Duffy was really doing a UK Garage Remix…”, she since then deleted the post, leaving her instagram with only one post. The 2008 hit spent five weeks atop the UK Chart and went on to become the third best-selling single of the year. Her debut album ‘Rockferry’ peaked at number 1, which featured songs ‘Mercy’ and ‘Warwick Avenue’ (the latter peaked at 3). Her 2010 LP ‘Endlessly’ peaked at number 9 too!
Sharing with CNN, the Welsh artist recalled: “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 I was stuck with him for another day, he didn’t look at me, I was to walk behind him, I was somewhat conscious and withdrawn.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 do not know how I had the strength to endure those days, I did feel the presence of something that helped me stay alive. 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.”
“After it happened, someone I knew came to my house and saw me on my balcony staring into space, wrapped in a blanket. I cannot remember getting home. The person said I was yellow in colour and I was like a dead person. They were obviously frightened but did not want to interfere, they had never seen anything like it.”
Ultimately, the singer didn’t want to completely disappear and change everything about her life, having already lost so much. She stated she didn’t want to do a disservice to herself by hiding her story.
