Paris Hilton claims she was humiliated and abused as a teenager at Utah boarding school
Paris Hilton has tearfully described how she was humiliated and abused as a teenager during a “traumatising” period at boarding school.
The 39-year-old heiress said she was “violated every single day” during her 11 months at Provo Canyon School in Utah as staff watched her shower and put her into solitary confinement without clothes as a punishment.
Hilton, who was sent to the school by her parents aged 16 to try to curb her partying lifestyle, said she was forced to take pills there without a medical diagnosis.
Testifying to a Utah State Capitol committee in Salt Lake City, she said one of the staff members would “brag to other students that she was the one that broke Paris Hilton”.
“Talking about something so personal was and is still terrifying," Hilton said. "But I cannot go to sleep at night knowing that there are children that are experiencing the same abuse that I and so many others went through, and neither should you.”
Hilton was in Utah to lobby senators for a new law bringing in government oversight of youth residential treatment centres and requiring them to document when they use restraints on children.
Calling herself an “institutional abuse survivor”, Hilton told the committee: “I speak today on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of children currently in residential care facilities across the United States.”
Hilton alleged fellow pupils were “restrained, thrown into walls, strangled, and sexually abused regularly”, and describing her own experience she said: “I was verbally, mentally and physically abused on a daily basis. I was cut off from the outside world and stripped of all my human rights.”
She told senators: “For the past 20 years, I have had a recurring nightmare where I'm kidnapped in the middle of the night by two strangers, strip-searched, and locked in a facility. I wish I could tell you that this haunting nightmare was just a dream, but it is not.“
Without a diagnosis, I was forced to consume medication that made me feel numb and exhausted. I didn't breathe fresh air or see the sunlight for 11 months. “There was zero privacy — every time I would use the bathroom or take a shower— it was monitored.
“At 16 years old, as a child, I felt their piercing eyes staring at my NKD body. I was just a kid and felt violated every single day.”
Hilton wiped away tears during her emotional testimony, repeating allegations of abuse she first revealed in last year’s documentary This is Paris. The school, now under new ownership, has not commented on Hilton’s allegations but said: “‘We do not condone or promote any form of abuse.”
Following her testimony, Hilton said she intends to take the cause to President Joe Biden and the national Congress. “This bill is going to definitely help a lot of children but there’s obviously more work to do, and I’m not going to stop until change happens”, she said.
