Paris Hilton: I am 'turning my pain into purpose'
Heiress and influencer Paris Hilton speaks out about the abuse she faced in a youth care facility and what she is doing now to stop it from happening in the future.
Paris Hilton said this week that she was sexually abused as a teenager at a boarding school in Utah by staff members performing cervical exams.
She alleged "very late at night" staff members would take her and other girls at the Provo Canyon School in Utah into a room.
"They would have us lay on a table and put their fingers inside of us," she told the New York Times in an emotional video interview. "I don’t know what they were doing, but it was definitely not a doctor, and it was really scary, and it’s something that I really had blocked out for many years."
She said looking back on it as an adult she realizes it was "definitely sexual abuse."
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Actress Paris Hilton walks between meeting with lawmakers as she encourages legislation to establish a bill of rights for children placed in congregate care facilities, on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
She later said that a staff member told her he was taking her phone privileges away when she started to talk to her parents about her treatment at the school.
"We’re going to tell your parents that you’re manipulating, that you’re lying," she claimed the staff member said he hung up the phone while she was on a call with her parents.
The 41-year-old socialite recently started speaking out about her time at the school, where she was sent as a 17-year-old because of her rebelliousness. She said she had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.
On Tuesday, she also tweeted about her experience. "At Provo Canyon School, I was woken up in the middle of the night by male staff who ushered me into a private room and performed cervical exams on me in the middle of the night."
She continued, "Sleep-deprived & heavily medicated, I didn’t understand what was happening. I was forced to lie on a padded table, spread my legs & submit to cervical exams. I cried while they held me down & said, ‘No!’ They just said, ‘Shut up. Be quiet. Stop struggling or you’ll go to Obs.’"
Paris Hilton and Kathy Hilton attend the 2022 MTV Movie & TV Awards: UNSCRIPTED at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. The reality star said her parents thought they were sending her to a normal boarding school and were shocked by her recent allegations. ( Presley Ann)
She said it was a reoccurring experience for herself and other "survivors" of the school.
"I was violated & I am crying as I type this because no one, especially a child, should be sexually abused," she tweeted. "My childhood was stolen from me & it kills me this is still happening to other innocent children."
PARIS HILTON URGES BIDEN, LAWMAKERS TO ADOPT BILL OF RIGHTS FOR YOUTH IN CONGREGATE CARE FACILITIES
She first began talking about her experiences at the school in her 2020 documentary "This is Paris" and has continued to advocate for reform.
"It takes all my courage to talk about it, but I couldn’t stand knowing that children as young as 8 years old are being sent to these ‘troubled teen’ programs by parents who don’t know and government agencies that don’t care," she wrote in a USA Today opinion piece last May.
Paris Hilton speaks as she joins congressional lawmakers during a press conference on upcoming legislation to establish a bill of rights to protect children placed in congregate care facilities, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on October, 20, 2021. - Congregate care are facilities such as group homes, foster care, residential treatment facilities, maternity homes, or emergency shelters. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
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The heiress has gone to Washington, D.C., multiple times in an effort to pass laws for oversight of the schools.
She told Fox & Friends last year "My parents had no idea, they thought this was a normal boarding school."
She said she waited so long to start talking about the alleged abuse because she was so traumatized she "didn’t even want to think about it or speak about it out loud."
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She said she "buried it inside for 20 years" but she was "proud" to turn her "pain into purpose" for legislation, having changed laws regarding the schools in several states.
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