Photo: Instagram.com/parishilton
Paris Hilton has come forward with more horrifying details from her time at the Provo Canyon School, a “therapeutic” boarding school in Utah she attended as a teenager. In her 2020 YouTube Originals documentary This Is Paris, Hilton opened up about the abuse and neglect she suffered while enrolled there. In a subsequent interview with NBC News in 2021, she added that she was routinely slapped, spied on, and deprived of sleep.
And now, the reality star has alleged that she was also sexually assaulted by staff. In an interview for a New York Times op-ed video, Hilton says she and other girls at the school were awakened in the early hours of the morning for “medical exams,” adding, “It wasn’t even with a doctor—it was with a couple different staff members, where they would have us lay on the table and put their fingers inside of us…. I don’t know what they were doing, but it was definitely not a doctor.”
She continues, “It was really scary and something that I really had blocked out for many years, but it’s coming back all the time now and I think about it. Now, looking back as an adult, that was definitely sexual abuse.”
A year ago, she traveled to Washington, DC, to lobby for legislation that would impose stricter regulations on the “troubled teen industry.”
In 2020, Provo Canyon said in a statement to the press that the school was sold in 2000, and that the current administration can’t comment on anything that happened when Paris Hilton attended in 1997.
On Twitter, Hilton shared the Times piece, which includes stories from other “troubled teen” survivors. And yes, survivors is the correct term; the Times identified at least three children who died at “troubled teen” facilities.
I opened up in a @NYTimes video about something I’ve never discussed before. 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. https://t.co/mWxF8Pvmaw
— ParisHilton (@ParisHilton) October 11, 2022
Hilton also shared details from her experience, writing, “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…’ This was a recurring experience not only for me but for other #survivors. I was violated & I am crying as I type this because no one, especially a child, should be sexually abused. My childhood was stolen from me & it kills me this is still happening to other innocent children.”
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, visit RAINN.org for free, confidential resources.
Originally published in Glamour.com
