Sugababes singer Keisha Buchanan has bravely revealed she was kidnapped at the age of just 16 at the start of the group’s career.
Keisha, now 41, was snatched near her school just before her GCSE exams at the same time as the Sugababes were taking off.
The ordeal meant her parents pulled her out of school and she never took her GCSE exams.
But Keisha was not given a break from the band – which also included Mutya Buena and Siobhan Donaghy – and instead was thrown back into the studio and promo duties.
Appearing on the Live, Laugh, Luke… with Luke Hamnett podcast, she said: “We ended up leaving school. Siobhan went back to school to take her GCSEs and they accepted her back. When Mutya and I tried to get back, they were so rude. They were like, ‘Oh no, no, no, you’re not coming back. Like you guys thought you were going to be these pop stars. Let’s see what’s going to happen.’ So they wouldn’t accept us back.
“Then I had like this incident right before my GCSEs where I was kidnapped.
“So, because it was quite a traumatic experience, my parents were, like, ‘Yeah, so we’re going to do a different type of education. So I kind of finished like my education, but I just couldn’t do my GCSEs.
“The details I have to leave because one day it’s going to be in my book. But I was basically taken after school by someone.
“I think I just sort of blocked it and then had to just get back into, you know, promotion of our first single.”
Keisha was held captive for a few hours by her kidnapper and the traumatic incident led to her having therapy to try and deal with what occurred.
She said: “It was a few hours. So for a kid, you know, it’s a long time.”
When asked if she’d undergone therapy sessions to process what happened, she answered: “Of course. I’ve actually been such an advocate of like therapy since I was 16, really.”
Keisha is planning a tell-all book that details what she went through in the Sugababes, including the kidnapping, the numerous line-up changes, being kicked out of her own group and the fight to reclaim the band’s name.
Keisha feels like a survivor due to all the trauma she has endured.
When asked how the Sugababes are still going, she answered: “Honestly, I feel like, and it sounds really cliche, but I do feel like it’s by God’s grace. I genuinely feel that way because the things that have happened to us behind the scenes that no one even knows, like being kidnapped, I feel like there were so many things that have happened that really, some of us shouldn’t have even survived and we’re standing today.”