Paris Hilton Testifies Before Congress on Facilities for Troubled Teens

“I will not stop until America’s youth are safe,” Hilton said in his testimony.

During a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Paris Hilton recounted the physical and psychological abuse she allegedly suffered in group shelters as a teenager.

Hilton, who was sent to a series of youth residential treatment centers starting when she was 16, calmly testified that she was violently restrained, stripped naked and thrown into solitary confinement during her stay.

“These programs promised healing, growth and support, but did not allow me to speak, move freely or even look out the window for two years,” she said. “I was force-fed drugs and sexually abused by staff.”

Hilton, 43, a reality TV star and great-granddaughter of Hilton Hotels founder Conrad Hilton, shared her disturbing story in support of a bipartisan effort to reauthorize an outdated program that provides states with resources to prevent child abuse and neglect.

In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over several child welfare programs, Hilton denounced residential facilities' treatment of foster children as “criminal” and urged to invest in family care.

“I was very proud to be invited to testify about my experience and advocacy work on the Ways and Means Committee,” Hilton said in a statement to The New York Times through her press secretary. “More than 50,000 foster youth are placed in residential treatment centers each year, and I hope my testimony has inspired representatives to take a closer look at strengthening community resources to ensure we keep vulnerable children out of centers.”

Residential facilities for adolescents have faced increasing pressure in recent years after reports of deaths and abuse at these facilities.

Sarah Font, an associate professor of sociology and public policy at Pennsylvania State University who specializes in child abuse and neglect in foster care, said many child welfare systems struggle to obtain the funding and services needed to provide care to parents and children.

“In general, we want children who can be safely and appropriately cared for in a kinship or non-kinship foster family to be in those settings rather than in a care facility,” Font said.

“Children may not disclose abuse they suffered in a family or residential setting until they are adults – or perhaps ever,” making research difficult, she added.

Hilton previously detailed the abuse she suffered at centers for “troubled teens” in a 2020 YouTube documentary, in a memoir published last year, and in a 2021 opinion piece for the Washington Post, in which she wrote that she had been “strangled, slapped, spied on while showering and deprived of sleep” in the four centers she was sent to as a teenager.

One of the institutions, Provo Canyon School in Provo, Utah, declined to comment on Wednesday's hearing but referred to its 2021 statement after Hilton's abuse allegations. “Provo Canyon School was sold by its previous owner in August 2000,” said the 2021 release, updated in June. “We therefore cannot comment on operations or student experience prior to this date.” The statement also asserted that the school's “mental health treatment has evolved from a behavioral-based basis to a personalized, trauma-informed approach.”

This week’s testimony wasn’t the first time Hilton has waded into the political arena and used her celebrity to get involved. In 2021, she testified before the Utah Senate Judiciary Committee to call for greater regulation of the youth foster care industry. Later that year, she worked with a group of congressional Democrats on a federal “bill of rights” for children in residential care that would guarantee access to clean water and phone calls with parents, among other proposals, according to NBC News. And last April, Hilton supported a California bill that would require greater transparency about disciplinary practices at short-term residential care facilities.

“I will not stop until America’s youth are safe,” Hilton said in his testimony Wednesday, adding: “If you are a child in the system, listen to my words: I see you. I believe you. I know what you’re going through, and I will not abandon you.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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