Paris Hilton Shares Horrific Sex Abuse Story With Congress

The “inhumane treatment” she received at Utah youth treatment facilities.

Paris Hilton hasn’t given up on her advocacy for kids and teens living in allegedly abusive youth treatment facilities. On Wednesday, the reality star testified before Congress at a hearing for strengthening child welfare, telling lawmakers about the “inhumane treatment” she experienced at youth facilities as a teen, including being “force-fed medication” and being “sexually abused by the staff.”

Hilton has long been an advocate for an overhaul of for-profit youth centers; in 2020, she shared her own horrific experiences as a teen at four such centers. The worst of them, Hilton has said, was The Provo Canyon School, which has come under fire in recent years for rampant alleged abuse. Hilton wrote in her 2023 memoir Paris that being sent to Provo was seen as a threat because of the center’s reputation. Since the Provo school is now operated under different management than when Hilton attended, it has not commented on her experiences, according to Axios.

Hilton said on Wednesday that although she didn’t enter the facility via the foster care system, she was still subject to abuse, as her parents were “completely deceived, lied to, and manipulated” about what was really happening to her there.

“When I was 16 years old, I was ripped from my bed in the middle of the night and transported across state lines to the first of four youth residential treatment facilities,” she said at the hearing. “These programs promised healing, growth, and support, but instead did not allow me to speak, move freely, or even look out a window for two years. I was force-fed medications and sexually abused by the staff.”

“I was violently restrained and dragged down hallways, stripped naked, and thrown into solitary confinement,” she continued. “Can you only imagine the experience for youth who are placed by the state and don’t have people regularly checking in on them?”

Hilton encouraged lawmakers to bring in regulations that require these programs to allow children to speak to their parents or a trusted adult alone.

“All of my outside contact was completely controlled, and they would always have a staff member sitting right next to me,” Hilton said of her time in the programs.

“So, if I said even one negative thing about facility, they immediately would hang up the phone and then I would be punished, and either physically beaten or thrown into solitary confinement.”

Hilton would cope with the abuse she endured in these facilities by pretending to be someone else, she told The Independent last year.

“I was in so much pain that I created this Barbie doll fantasy life,” Hilton said. “It was a character I put on as a mask to protect myself.”

On Wednesday, Hilton said that she supports the committee’s bipartisan efforts to reauthorize a child welfare improvement act - Title IV-B of the Social Security Act -which expired in 2021.

The heiress also called on lawmakers to pass the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, which would establish a federal working group on youth residential programs. That working group would then submit recommendations on how to improve the safety and treatment of kids placed in residential programs.

Hilton told the committee that youth residential programs often care more about profit than children’s safety.

“That means that they’re trying to spend as little money as possible, and the type of employees they’re hiring are people not being checked, people that should be nowhere near children,” Hilton testified.

Hilton went on to say that she attended facilities with foster and adopted youth and was moved by the stories of “innocent kids who have not committed crimes, kids whose parents didn’t have resources to support them, kids whose parents passed away—kids who have already experienced trauma.”

“This $23 billion-a-year industry sees this population as dollar signs,” Hilton added, saying that reforming these centers is a “life or death responsibility.”

Lawmakers praised Hilton’s testimony throughout the hearing.

“Ms Hilton, I want to thank you for your compelling and corageous testimony today, and the work you’ve been doing not only to highlight the problems you’ve faced, but the problems that many others face on a day-to-day-basis,” Representative Mike Thompson said.

“Ms Hilton, I first read about your story in Vanity Fair. I don’t usually read that magazine, my wife does. She told me, ‘You have to read this story. You won’t believe what happened to her,’” Representative Mike Kelly said. “You telling what happened to you...is absolutely incredible and opens up a whole new vision for the rest of us.”

Hilton also appeared before Congress in 2021, where she advocated for lawmakers to adopt a “Bill of Rights” for children in residential facilities.

On Wednesday she said that she hopes her testimony makes a difference in the lives of children like her.

“It’s an honor and a pleasure to be able to do this for the children who have no voice and be the hero that I needed when I was a little girl terrified in these places,” she said.