Duffy asks Netflix to remove its new release due to its glamorisation of ‘sex trafficking, kidnapping and rape’

‘When we know better, let us do better.’

(Image credit: Getty Images)

‘When we know better, let us do better.’

Duffy made headlines earlier this year as the Grammy award-winning artist took to social media to reveal that at the height of her success, she was drugged, held captive and raped after being kidnapped.

‘Many of you wonder what happened to me, where did I disappear to and why,’ she explained in a now deleted Instagram post. ‘The truth is, and please trust me I am ok and safe now, I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days… 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, whose real name is Aimee, released a song, ‘Something Beautiful’, to lift morale over the past months and has since released her account of what happened.

This week, the singer was forced to speak out about the Netflix film, 365 Days, asking the streaming site to take it down due to the fact that it ‘glamorises the brutal reality of sex trafficking, kidnapping and rape’.

Writing an open letter to Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings, Duffy asked the film to be taken down, insisting that it ‘should not be anyone’s idea of entertainment, nor should it be described as such, or be commercialised in this manner.’

‘I don’t want to be in this position to have to write to you, but the virtue of my suffering obliges me to do so, because of a violent experience that I endured of the kind that you have chosen to present as “adult erotica”’, the letter goes on to read according to Deadline.

‘I calm myself to explain to you here – when I was trafficked and raped, I was lucky to come away with my life, but far too many have not been so lucky. And now I have to witness these tragedies, and my tragedy, eroticised and demeaned. Where can one turn? But to have to address you in writing.

'To anyone who may exclaim “it is just a movie”, it is not “just”, when it has great influence to distort a subject which is widely undiscussed, such as sex trafficking and kidnapping, by making the subject erotic.’

Concluding the letter, Duffy writes: ‘When we know better, let us do better.’

Jenny Proudfoot
Features Editor

Jenny Proudfoot is an award-winning journalist, specialising in lifestyle, culture, entertainment, international development and politics. She has worked at Marie Claire UK for seven years, rising from intern to Features Editor and is now the most published Marie Claire writer of all time. She was made a 30 under 30 award-winner last year and named a rising star in journalism by the Professional Publishers Association.