Lisa Wilkinson opens up about Karl Stefanovic, her teen sexual assault in new memoir

In excerpts from her new memoir, Lisa Wilkinson reveals a painful secret she’s been holding for years and lifts the lid on her former Today co-host.

They worked side-by-side on-air each weekday for a decade – but Lisa Wilkinson admits she and Karl Stefanovic haven’t kept in touch since their time hosting Today.

It’s understood Stefanovic plays a relatively small role in Wilkinson’s upcoming memoir It Wasn’t Meant To Be Like This – and asked about the state of their current relationship in a new interview with Stellar, she says: “We don’t really have one. But I wish him well. Everyone has moved on.”

It’s perhaps a surprising admission from Wilkinson, given the pair appeared to publicly continue their friendship after her shock October 2017 exit from the Today show, posing for photos during a lunch together weeks after the headline-making resignation:

Wilkinson does offer more details in the book about her sudden departure from the Nine Network due to a contract dispute. Many were waiting for her to reveal exactly what happened the day she abruptly left the network without even an on-air goodbye to viewers, but she now says she needed a few years’ distance before she could tell her story: “At the time it was pretty hard to live through.”

“In writing the book, I had to go back and understand what everyone else was consuming about my story at the time. And it was quite shocking some of the narrative that was put out there by my previous employer. I feel that there was a lot that was said that was untrue. And I won’t say that some of the things I read weren’t pretty painful,” she told Stellar.

Lisa and Karl were an on-air team for a decade.

Elsewhere in the book, out November 3, Wilkinson tells the harrowing story of a sexual assault she suffered as a teenager, a story she decided to share publicly after meeting political staffer Brittany Higgins last year and helping to tell her story of allegedly being raped inside Parliament House.

Wilkinson reveals she was sexually assaulted by a friend’s father while she was in high school, writing that she was at a close friend’s home waiting for her father to collect her when the friend’s father cornered her in a room alone.

She fought back against the assault and ran out to the safety of her father – but never told anyone, until now.

“So often women weren’t believed in those days,” she said.

“It was only when women linked arms and said: ‘We are doing this together. We are not going to let women be isolated and excluded when they tell their stories’. Before there was no appetite for the ugliness but now we know how widespread the ugliness is.”

Lisa’s upcoming memoir.

Wilkinson says meeting Brittany Higgins helped her share her own story. Picture: Channel 10

“I thought, if [women] don’t come forward and don’t show how incredibly common these experiences are, then the perpetrators win. And I couldn’t be a party to that,” she said.

Lisa Wilkinson has vowed to leave “no stone unturned” in the autobiography, which runs to almost 500 pages and tracks her incredible rise through Australia’s media ranks, from being the youngest editor of Dolly magazine at just 21, to becoming the international editor-in-chief of Cleo, to her move into the TV world in the 90s as a panellist on beloved daytime show Beauty and the Beast.

In an Instagram post Wilkinson said the book “tells the story of how this magazine-junkie kid from (proudly) the western suburbs of Sydney, worked hard to survive the bumps and bruises of my teenage years, and went on to find myself in situations and places I could have once only ever dreamt about.”

She said the tell-all would disclose many long-held secrets.

“In it, I’ve completely opened up on things I’ve never talked about before, not even with some of my closest girlfriends,” she said. “I’ve left no stone unturned, particularly when it comes to some of the more public moments you’ve seen in the headlines. Now, you’ll know the truth.”

“I share the roller coaster ride of joys, and sadnesses, the pinch-myself moments, and the hard lessons I’ve had to learn along the way.”

Read Lisa Wilkinson’s full interview and book extracts in Stellar, free with today’s Sunday Telegraph.

It Wasn’t Meant To Be Like This by Lisa Wilkinson (HarperCollins, $45), out on November 3 and available for pre-order now.

Originally published as Lisa Wilkinson opens up about Karl Stefanovic, her teen sexual assault in new memoir