Doffy is a handsome guy, plus when he's surrounded by his ugly ass henchmen even more so. Likely wasn't rape, you're right. On the flipside he is a bit of a sadist and does manipulate people with strings so there will always be that thought.
I mean she was calling doffy a pet name and Doffy was calling her that too. If he used his strings to actually force her body to do stuff without her mind's consent then they wouldn't have pet names for each other.
Like Of course Oda cut this entirely from the direct manga because such questions would and rise and he would've had to do way too much in the story to answer them so he just hinted at it and cut the rest.
To me as am avid consumer of Telenovelas for a time basically got the gist of it pretty fast after Oda explained it. If you aren't used to such stories and like for example watch stuff like Game of thrones more then you will most likely skew to more nefarious things than Oda intended
As it stands Rape is too much for Oda to tackle. Violence is treated very differently from Sex in ALL media and cultures so saying there's violence in one piece doesn't mean Oda wants to tackle sex too