Cheryl Burke Admits to Feeling ‘So Disgusted’ Whenever She Had ‘Nice’ Dance Partners Due to Childhood Trauma: ‘Gave Me the Ick’

Cheryl Burke is sharing how past trauma has impacted her adult life.

During an appearance on the Oldish podcast, hosted by Randy Spelling, Brian Austin Green and Sharna Burgess, Burke, 40, reflected on the sexual abuse she endured as a child. Explaining that she has moved on in many ways since testifying against her abuser at the age of 9, the Dancing with the Stars alum said she is still healing.

“Sharna, you were saying, ‘People must think that you have this life, this perfect life, and it’s so beautiful how you went from all this child abuse, you know, me getting sexually molested when I was a little girl,’” Burke said. “In my brain, this is home, unfortunately.”

She continued: “[It] was not having a father figure and turning to men who weren’t, I guess, healthy, but also I was attracting physical and mental abuse because this is all I knew, so it felt like home.”

She went on to say that the feeling of comfort in mistreatment seeped into her life as she got older, even shaping the way she felt about her job as a dancer.

“I remember feeling so disgusted when I would have a nice dance partner, let’s say, who would treat me with respect,” she revealed. “Now that’s how much I hated myself, to the point where I was disgusted by people who were nice to me because, obviously, which I didn’t know back then, but I didn’t think I deserved that type of treatment. It was so foreign to me, it was like it gave me the ick.”

Burke, who has been open in the past about choosing celibacy after her separation from Matthew Lawrence in 2022, said that trauma response is one of the reasons she isn’t dating right now.

“This is why I’ve been single, and I choose to be single until I can — well there’s no magic switch — but I know I’m not ready to date yet,” she said.

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In addition to the sexual abuse, Burke said she experienced other trauma as a child that led her to bring negative people into her life as she grew up. 

“My first memory as a kid was seeing my father with another woman, like literally as if it was yesterday,” she revealed. “It’s so funny because I always ask my guests this, like, ‘What’s your first memory as a kid?’ For the most part, it’s all like, ‘My grandma picked me out of the crib.’ But I’m like, ‘Great, I saw my father literally be intimate with another Filipino woman,’ which was his secretary. And [her parents] were already separated, mind you, but still I was like freaking 2 years old.”

“So right then and there is like an imprint in my brain, I would say, on what my life unfolded to be as far as the choices and the men and not stable men I had in my life until my stepfather came into my life, who I call dad to this day,” she added.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.