Kara DioGuardi bravely opened up about being molested as a young girl in her memoir A Helluva High Note.
The 40-year-old singer-songwriter and former American Idol judge told PopEater that her mother didn't do anything about the sexual trauma she endured at age 11 at the hands of a family friend
"My mother was very Catholic, very repressed, a virgin when she married," she said. "She barely said the word sex and there weren't Oprahs, it was a different time, but in the last month I spoke to my mother's friend's kid and she relayed to me how my mother was speaking to her about it, so I definitely know it weighed on her and I spoke to her about it before she died."
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DioGuardi acknowledged her mother "didn't know how to handle it," but said her lack of response made her wonder: "Wow, am I not worth anything?"
In her book, DioGuardi also wrote about being date raped in 2000 by an unnamed music producer. She didn't report the incident. "At the time music was what was saving me… and I knew if I told somebody that would be what I was known for, and I wanted to get where I was going to, and I wanted to stay in music and I didn't want to be known as the girl who sued blah blah for this because I knew that would hurt my career, unfortunately.