Cheryl Burke Reveals She Was Molested
Depressing story about a celebrity that I really don’t care about, but since Cheryl Burke put it out there she obviously wants you to now about. I suppose she think it will help?
As a child, Burke was repeatedly molested by a friend of her family’s – and testified against him in court, helping send him to prison for nearly two decades.
“I’m telling my story,” says Burke, 26, who opens up about the molestation – and other struggles, including physical abuse by two former boyfriends – in her new book Dancing Lessons, (coauthored by PEOPLE senior writer Monica Rizzo). “They’re not secrets. There’s no shame.”
Her was a retired mailman who was trusted and well liked in her community. For some reason her parents had this pedophile picking five year old Cheryl from school and then he would bring her home to odd jobs around their family home. The assaults began when she was 5. She came forward about his abuse after he was accused of molesting other area children.
“I felt guilty for wanting his love and affection,” she says, calling testifying against him “the hardest thing I’ve ever done … I saw his face and lawyers were asking me these questions and I was like, ‘What am I doing? Did he even do anything wrong?’ ”
The moral of this story: Don’t let the mailman pick your kids up from school and into your home willy-nilly. The whole story sounds fishy. What the hell was going on at her house?
