Paris Hilton Calls for Federal Reform of Youth Treatment Facilities While Sharing Her Story of Traumatic Abuse

Paris Hilton described traumatic abuse during her time at a residential youth treatment facility during public testimony Wednesday before a House committee, during which she urged lawmakers to institute laws that protect vulnerable children.

Hilton, whose great-grandfather founded Hilton Hotels, advocated for federal oversight of these types of facilities and described his own experience with them. She told the House Ways and Means Committee that she was 16 years old when she was taken from her bed in the middle of the night and transferred to such a center.

At the time, Hilton was struggling with ADHD, getting poor grades and missing classes. Someone recommended to her parents that she be sent to a children’s treatment center.

“These programs promised ‘healing, growth and support,’ but instead they didn’t allow me to speak, move freely or even look out the window for two years,” Hilton said. “I was force-fed medication and sexually abused by staff. I was violently restrained and dragged through the corridors, stripped naked and thrown into solitary confinement.”

Hilton described her parents as “completely deceived” about her treatment at Provo Canyon School.

“My parents had no idea, they just thought it would be a normal boarding school,” Hilton said. “And when I got there, there was no therapy. We were constantly broken down, abused, yelled at, yelled at. No education. I learned nothing there except trauma.”

Lawmakers heard testimony the same day the U.S. Office of Inspector General of Health and Human Services said in a report that many states fail to monitor how often children in foster care are abused, sexually abused or improperly restrained, leaving them vulnerable to maltreatment.

Federal taxpayers spend billions of dollars on foster homes for thousands of children across the country. Some children are placed with families in homes or with their relatives. The most expensive care, which can cost hundreds of dollars a day or more, involves a residential treatment facility — essentially a group home for children. These children sometimes have complex medical or behavioral needs.

Hilton, 43, said she was testifying to be “the voice for children who currently have no voice.”

“For children who end up in foster care, we cannot allow them to grow up in facilities,” she told the committee. “The treatment these children have had to endure is criminal. These children deserve to grow up in safe, family-centered environments.”

She referenced a school for troubled boys in Jamaica where students accused staff of rampant abuse that included beatings and starvation. The US removed seven American children from school in March and since then five staff members have been charged with child cruelty.

Hilton traveled to Jamaica to support the boys and meet with them, telling the committee that she worked to find appropriate placements for them.

In a 2022 opinion editorial published in USA Today, Hilton alleged that as a teenager she was repeatedly forced out of bed at night for gynecological exams against her will. Hilton described being “nearly naked” in a concrete room used for solitary confinement.

Hilton wrote that “it’s not treatment; it’s torture.”

“It takes all my courage to talk about this, but I couldn’t bear to know that children as young as 8 years old are being sent to these ‘troubled teen’ programs by parents who don’t know and by government agencies who don’t know. be careful,” Hilton wrote.

Hilton led protests calling for the closure of Provo Canyon School and spoke with other alumni of the institution in her 2020 documentary, “This is Paris.”

Provo Canyon School said it was sold in 2000 and cannot comment on operations prior to that time.

Two senators began asking about the companies owning many of these youth treatment centers in 2022, including the owner of Provo Canyon School.