Paris Hilton delivered haunting testimony before Congress on Wednesday — detailing abuse she faced as a child in a youth treatment facility — advocating for new legislative solutions to the problematic industry.
Before a House committee meeting on modernizing child welfare programs, the star and heiress opened up about her own experience in residential care facilities after a tumultuous period in her teenage years.
“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,” the socialite testified to the House Ways and Means Committee. “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.”
Hilton, who previously testified over the "troubled teen" facilities, urged representatives to take up the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, which would provide more oversight to youth residential treatment facilities and protect their patients.
“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,” Hilton recalled. “My parents were completely deceived, lied to, or manipulated by this for-profit industry about the inhumane treatment I was experiencing.”
The model, reality TV star, and musician told congresspeople that victims are often marginalized and find it difficult to come forward, adding that, if the treatment was so egregious in expensive private facilities, she could only imagine how bad it was in public ones.
“It’s really difficult to tell anyone in the outside world. A lot of these kids are not believed because these places tell their parents they’re being lied to and manipulated because they want to go home,” she said.
Hilton, who detailed her shocking abuse to Salon last year, has become an advocate in a fight against the "troubled teen" industry, including the facilities in which she spent many of her teen years. Her time at Provo Canyon School was the subject of her 2020 memoir, "This is Paris."
Shares