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

Cheryl Burke opened up to 'Oldish' podcast hosts Randy Spelling, Brian Austin Green and Sharna Burgess about enduring sexual abuse as a child. She explained that it conditioned her to feel unsafe with people who showed her "respect," leading her to be "disgusted" by "nice" dance partners.

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.” 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. “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.

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