Paris Hilton has described traumatic abuse during her time at a school residence youth treatment facility During public testimony before a House committee on Wednesday, he urged lawmakers to pass laws that would protect vulnerable children.
Hilton, whose great-grandfather founded Hilton Hotels, was in favor of federal oversight of such facilities and described his own experience with them. He told the House Ways and Means Committee that he was 16 when he was taken from his 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 skipping classes. Someone advised her parents to send her to a children’s treatment facility.
“These programs promised ‘healing, growth, and support,’ but instead, they prevented me from speaking, moving, or even looking out of the window for two years,” Hilton said. “I was forcibly medicated and sexually assaulted by staff. I was violently restrained and dragged through corridors, stripped and put in solitary confinement.”
Hilton said her parents were “totally misled” about her treatment at Provo Canyon School.
“My parents had no idea, they just thought it was going to be a regular boarding school,” Hilton said. “And when I got there, there was no treatment. We were constantly being knocked down, abused, yelled at, yelled at. No education. I learned nothing there except trauma.”
Lawmakers heard testimony the same day from the U.S. Inspector General of Health and Human Services the report says that many states are unable to follow how often children in foster care are abusedsexually assaulted or improperly restrained, subjecting them to ill-treatment.
Federal taxpayers spend billions of dollars in foster care for thousands of children across the country. Some children are placed in homes with families or relatives. The most expensive care, which can cost hundreds of dollars or more per day, involves a residential treatment facility — essentially a group home for children. These children sometimes have complex medical or behavioral needs.
Hilton, 43, said she represents “the voice of children who don’t have a voice right now.”
“For children who come into foster care, we cannot allow them to grow up in institutions,” he told the committee. “The treatment these children have to endure is criminal. These children deserve to grow up in safe, family-centered environments.”
He referred to a A school for troubled boys in Jamaica, where students accused workers of widespread abuse, including beatings and starvation. The United States removed seven American children from school in March five employees have since been charged with child cruelty.
Hilton traveled to Jamaica to support and meet the boys, and told the committee he was working to find suitable places for them.
in 2022 opinion editor published in USA Today, Hilton claimed that as a teenager, she was repeatedly forced out of bed against her will at night for gynecological examinations. Hilton described being “almost naked” in a room used for solitary confinement.
Hilton wrote that it was “torture, not treatment.”
“It takes all of my courage to talk about this, but I couldn’t stand it when I knew that children as young as 8 were being sent to these ‘troubled teen’ programs by unknowing parents and unknowing government agencies. care,” Hilton wrote.
Hilton led protests calling for the closure of Provo Canyon School and spoke with other former students of the institution in the 2020 documentary “This is Paris.”
Provo Canyon School said it was sold in 2000 and could not comment on previous transactions.
Two senators started asking about the companies that own many of these youth treatment centers In 2022, including the owner of Provo Canyon School.