Tag: kidnap

U.K. singer Duffy returns to social media 4 years after revealing kidnap and rape

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Welsh singer Duffy broke her social media hiatus to share a motivational message to fans four years after revealing the horrific kidnap and rape that caused her to leave the spotlight.

The singer posted an inspirational video on Instagram on Monday.

“One day you’re going to see it, that happiness was always about the discovery, the hope, the listening to your heart and following it wherever it chose to go,” a voiceover said in the video.

“Happiness was always about being kinder to yourself. It was always about embracing the person you are becoming. One day you will understand, that happiness was always about learning how to live with yourself.”

Duffy, whose real name is Aimee Anne Duffy, captioned the video: “A little something to motivate the heart. Hope you are all doing well. Lots of love, Duffy.”

Fans flooded the comment section with love and support for the musician.

“We miss you Duffy and your beautiful voice,” one fan wrote.

“We miss you, Duffy. And we love you. Hope you are doing okay. Remember people love you here,” another commented.

Another told Duffy they think of her “EVERY day.”

“You’re so loved!” the fan wrote.

In 2020, Duffy told fans that she had been raped, drugged and held captive “over some days.”

“Of course, I survived. The recovery took time,” she said in a since-deleted Instagram post explaining her absence from the industry.

In February 2011 she announced that she was taking a break from music, following the release of her sophomore album “Endlessly.”

“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,” the singer said in the post.

In a written essay in 2020, Duffy wrote that she was drugged at a restaurant on her birthday and taken to a foreign country. She said she did not remember getting on an airplane and “came round in the back of a traveling vehicle.”

“I was put into a hotel room and the perpetrator returned and raped me,” she wrote. “I remember the pain and trying to stay conscious in the room after it happened.”

Duffy described flying back home with her alleged abductor and said he “drugged me in my own home in the four weeks.”

She eventually escaped but said she did not go to the police initially because she did not feel safe.

The 39-year-old singer rose to international fame in 2008 following the release of her song “Mercy,” which was featured in the “Sex and the City” movie and the television show “Grey’s Anatomy.” The following year, she won the Grammy for best pop vocal album.

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Women and children targeted in Haiti kidnap crisis as former French colony faces societal breakdown

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El Roi Academy students attend a press conference to demand the freedom of New Hampshire nurse Alix Dorsainvil and her daughter, who have been reported kidnapped, in the Cite Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Women and children are being used as bargaining chips in the kidnapping crisis – Odelyn Joseph/AP

An alarming number of women and children are being kidnapped and used as “bargaining chips” in Haiti, according to the United Nations.

Data shows almost 300 women and children were kidnapped in the first six months of this year – more than the total for 2022 and three times more than in 2021.

Including men, the UN said it has verified 1,014 kidnappings in 2023, mostly for ransom payments though also for recruitment into criminal gangs.

“The stories we are hearing are shocking and unacceptable,” said Gary Conille, Unicef  Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean. “Women and children are not commodities. They are not bargaining chips.”

Kidnappers also stand accused of raping and sexually abusing girls to pressure families into paying a ransom, according to the UN Human Rights Office.

“We heard one story of an 11-year-old girl who said she was raped by three men during her kidnapping,” Ricardo Pires, who works at Unicef, told The Telegraph.

A woman gestures during a protest to demand the release of American nurse Alix Dorsainvil and her daughter, who were kidnapped by armed men, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Women protest for the release of American nurse Alix Dorsainvil and her daughter, who were kidnapped by armed men, in Port-au-Prince – RALPH TEDY EROL/REUTERS

National police officers patrol an intersection in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Haiti has faced crippling violence since the assassination of its presidentwas assassinated two years ago – Odelyn Joseph/AP

According to CARDH, a Haitian human rights group, most kidnappings last 15 days and victims’ families are asked for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of US dollars. “Often after the first payment, the victims are not released and pay a second and a third ransom,” a spokesperson said.

Haiti has faced crippling violence since its president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his home two years ago. Elections have not been held since, and the Caribbean nation of 11 million people has no remaining elected officials.

According to the World Bank, nearly 60 per cent of the population now lives below the poverty line, with limited access to basic services. Almost 200 gangs have capitalised on the dire economic situation and scant job prospects by welcoming hundreds of youths into their ranks.

Instead of a working capital city, Port-au-Prince is now disrupted by daily blockades, looting and a widespread terror campaign as the gangs battle to expand their territory.

Criminal organisations dismember bodies, behead rivals and kill minors accused of being informants.

Doctors Without Borders last month announced that it was suspending services in one of its hospitals because some 20 armed men burst into an operating room and abducted a patient.

“There is such contempt for human life among the conflicting parties, and such violence in Port-au-Prince, that even the vulnerable, sick and wounded are not spared,” Mahaman Bachard Iro, the organisation’s head of programmes in Haiti, wrote in a statement.

With each official update, it seems that violence has continued to snowball. In the first three months of 2023, more than 1,630 people were killed, wounded or kidnapped in Haiti, a 30 per cent increase compared to the previous quarter, according to the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti.

More than 165,000 Haitians have also fled their homes, the International Organization for Migration said.

Since April, a brutal vigilante campaign to reclaim the streets of the capital from gangs – known as “bwa kale” – has taken hold. On April 24, 14 presumed gang members were beaten, doused in gasoline and set on fire.

Yet any efforts to mount an international intervention have stalled, largely because no country is prepared to lead it.

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