Kara DioGuardi has dealt with far worse things than judge-table spats on American Idol.
In a frank new memoir, A Helluva High Note, the music industry vet and former Idol judge, 40, reveals that she suffered molestation as a a child and, as a young adult, was date-raped by a prominent music producer.
DioGuardi says that, at age 11, a teenaged family friend repeatedly molested her. "On one particular day, he took me into the the back shed of his house and put his hands all over my [body]," DioGuardi writes in an excerpt at E! News. "I remember freezing and not knowing what to do."
Another painful secret: In 2000, as her music career rose, she went on a date with a "fairly known producer," who sexually forced himself upon her after a cordial dinner.
"[W]ithin a few hours, he was on top of me, pumping, sweating, and speaking to me in Spanish, not a word of which I could understand," DioGuardi writes.
She kept the violent date-rape secret for fear it would ruin her career, she says.
DioGuardi also writes of sexual harassment at the hands of a "hugely successful artist" who was obsessed with "Russian porn" and hiring strippers for perform sex acts in front of him.
Of her early season 9 departure from Idol, the star explains that she was struggling to get pregnant via IVF.
"I wanted a child and there was no way I could get pregnant under the stress of eighteen-hour work days and live TV. . . My desire to be in control of my destiny was larger than my need to be a household name." A Helluva High Note hits shelves April 26; DioGuardi will next appear on TV via Platinum Hit, a new Bravo reality series debuting May 30.
