Paris Hilton speaks out about alleged abuse at ‘troubled teen’ boarding school – and her fight back
Paris Hilton’s mansion is in a gated community in Beverly Park, one of Los Angeles’s most upmarket enclaves where Adele and Mark Wahlberg also live.
On the driveway is a pink Bentley and a blue Porsche. The grand entrance is flanked by a giant white model giraffe and a neon pink Chanel sign and the hallways are lined with framed prints of the woman herself.
We are led to a room upstairs with a full-sized bar and fluffy white chairs where even the cushions have prints of Hilton’s face.
It is a home befitting the original “It Girl” – a reality TV star who once traded off her ditzy persona.
But this is a grown-up Hilton and we’re here to discuss serious issues, specifically the two years she spent at boarding schools for so-called troubled teens.
“It was like something out of a horror film,” she says. “It’s like they enjoyed abusing children.”
In the early 2000s, Hilton was one of the most photographed women in the world, the leader of a party set that included Britney Spears, Kim Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan.
But behind the celebrity, there was a darker reality.
Hilton was well known for her friendships with high profile stars, including Britney Spears – the pair are pictured with Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs in Las Vegas in 2007
She was the ‘original influencer’ and inspired Kim Kardashian, who features in her 2020 documentary, This Is Paris
As a 16-year-old she was sent to a series of residential facilities for so-called troubled teens, children with all manner of issues, from bad behaviour to addiction problems and mental illness.
“I wasn’t a bad kid,” she says.
“I was just a normal 16-year-old girl. My parents were very strict. They didn’t want me going out and I rebelled and started sneaking out and getting bad grades.
“My parents spoke to a therapist who recommended these schools. I later found out that this therapist and many others receive commissions sending children to these places.”
Hilton with her parents, Rick and Kathy, and younger sister Nicky in 1990
Like many children who attend these schools, Hilton’s parents paid for secure transportation, in effect an authorised kidnapping, where strangers take teenagers from their beds in the middle of the night and bundle them into the back of waiting vans.
“At 4.30 in the morning, two large men came into my room and just shook me out of bed and said, ‘Do you want to go the easy way or the hard way?’.
“They were holding up handcuffs and I had no idea what was happening, I thought I was being kidnapped, I had no idea who these people were.
“It just blows my mind that there are people like this that exist in the world that could treat children like this and get away with it for so long.
“I still have severe nightmares about it.”
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‘Snatched from their beds by strangers’: Inside the multibillion-dollar ‘troubled teen’ industry
Hilton ended up at Provo Canyon School, in the foothills of Utah’s Wasatch Mountains.
It is marketed as an “intensive, psychiatric youth residential treatment centre,” but she says every day there was a living hell.
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Paris Hilton: ‘Troubled teen’ school was a ‘living hell’
In her newly released autobiography, Paris: The Memoir, she alleges she was woken in the middle of the night by male staff – not doctors – and led to a private room, where they forced her to submit to cervical exams.
“To be treated like a criminal when you’re just a kid,” she says, “and the strip searches constantly”.
“As an adult now, I see that as sexual abuse. Male and female staff watching a young girl changing or naked or taking a shower, it was just dehumanising on all levels.”
Sky’s Martha Kelner speaks to Paris Hilton
She also claims to have been force-fed medication.
“One time I was like, ‘I don’t want to take these anymore’. So I just kind of had the pills under my tongue and put them in a Kleenex.
“Later on someone found out and I got in so much trouble and they sent me to what they call ‘obs’, where you’re just locked in this tiny cell with blood stains on the wall.
“They put the air conditioning as cold as possible, take away all your clothes and they leave you there for hours and hours.”
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In response to the allegations, Provo Canyon’s owners say the school was sold in 2000 and they cannot comment on the operations or student experience prior to that time. But that they do not condone or promote any form of abuse.
Hilton, now, 42 and the mother to a two-month-old son, Phoenix, says her perspective has hardened on the troubled teen industry.
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America’s ‘troubled teen’ industry
“I’m just so in love with my little baby boy,” she says.
“I want to do everything to protect him and I know by doing this work, I will protect future children.
“I just can’t imagine my little boy being anywhere near these type of people, my heart goes out to all the children who are locked up in there now.”
Hilton announced the birth of her first child in January on social media. Pic: parishilton/Instagram
She thinks her own parents were victims of deceptive marketing by the troubled teen industry.
Hilton has become a figurehead for a movement that campaigns to shut down troubled teen schools across America.
She’s helped introduce new laws in Utah, which now put limits on the use of restraints, drugs and isolation rooms in youth treatment programmes. It also requires facilities to document any instance in which physical restraints and seclusion are used.
But she now wants to effect change on a national level.
“These people need to be held accountable,” she says.
“They need to have people that have proper licensing, people that don’t have a criminal record. There’s just so much that goes into it. For children to have rights, it should be common sense but unfortunately, in some states, it’s not that way.
“I know by us continuing to fight this fight, that we will succeed and they messed with the wrong girl.”
Listening to her reliving the darkest moments of her life and the determination to bring those responsible to justice, it is hard to dispute that they did indeed mess with the wrong girl.
A woman who saw a man falling from an upper tier at Wembley Stadium says a similar incident at an Oasis concert over the weekend in which a fan died makes her wonder whether lessons have been learned.
Stephanie Good, 39, said a man fell during a Euro 2020 match between England and Croatia at Wembley in June 2021.
He landed “right next to where we were” on the “stairwell between rows of seats”, she said.
Named as Jon, he reportedly survived but suffered two broken ankles, a fractured femur and fractured pelvis just before kick-off.
Ms Good said she tried to give feedback but was unable to and felt the “emergency response was really lacking”.
Oasis, meanwhile, said they were “shocked and saddened to hear of the tragic death of a fan” at their Wembley concert on Saturday.
The man reportedly fell from the stadium’s upper tier.
In his 40s, he was found with “injuries consistent with a fall” and pronounced dead at the scene, the Met Police said.
Ms Good, an NHS manager from east London, said what happened at the Oasis gig was “so similar” to what she witnessed that it made her wonder “were lessons learned”?
Liam and Noel Gallagher on stage for the first Wembley night of the Oasis reunion tour. Pic: Lewis Evans
During that incident, among stadium staff “nobody seemed to know what to do”, she told the Press Association.
She thinks the man may have been trying to attach a flag to the front of a stand and “somehow managed to fall straight over”.
She said: “They (staff) didn’t seem well-trained in terms of how to respond to a really big emergency.
“Their stewards were kind of paralysed a little bit by fear, or they just weren’t well trained and didn’t know how to call for paramedics.
“It was us who were sort of shouting at them that they needed to get some paramedics.
“The first person on the scene wasn’t a stadium paramedic or St John Ambulance. It was an off-duty firefighter who had seen the guy fall and ran down to just try and offer some help.”
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Regarding the follow-up, Ms Good said staff moved spectators to other seats but did not ask for witness statements.
She added: “They didn’t seek any input from people who’d seen the incident or the aftermath of it. They didn’t seem interested in speaking to anybody about it.
“I was a bit concerned, because I felt that the emergency response was really lacking.”
She then tried to get in touch to give feedback, but was unable to do so and did not receive a response to a message on social media, she said.
A Wembley spokesperson said: “Wembley Stadium operates to a very high health and safety standard, fully meeting legal requirements for the safety of spectators and staff, and is certified to and compliant with the ISO 45001 standard.
“We work very closely and collaboratively with all relevant event delivery stakeholders – including event owners, local authorities, the Sports Grounds Safety Authority and the police – to deliver events to high standards of safety, security and service for everyone attending or working in the venue.”
Sean “Diddy” Combs has been denied bail ahead of his sentencing on prostitution-related charges.
Judge Arun Subramanian said the hip-hop mogul had failed to show sufficient evidence he is not a flight risk and also cited admissions of previous violence made during his trial.
Combs, 55, has been in prison since his arrest in September last year.
During a two-month trial, jurors heard allegations that he had coerced former girlfriends, including singer and model Cassie Ventura, into having drug-fuelled sex marathons with male sex workers, while he watched and filmed them.
Diddy fell to his knees after the verdict was delivered last month. Pic: Reuters/ Jane Rosenberg
In July, he was found guilty of two counts of transportation for prostitution – but cleared of more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking, which carried potential life sentences.
The rapper’s legal team hailed this a “victory” and immediately applied for bail ahead of sentencing, citing his acquittal on the top charges.
After this was denied, they submitted another application last week. Judge Subramanian has now rejected the request again.
In denying the motion for bail, the judge found Combs had failed to show sufficient evidence to counter arguments he is a flight risk, writing in a court filing: “Increasing the amount of the bond or devising additional conditions doesn’t change the calculus given the circumstances and heavy burden of proof that Combs bears.”
Read more:
How the trial unfolded
The rise and fall of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
Judge Arun Subramanian heard Diddy’s trial and will also sentence the rapper
He also found that an argument by the music star’s legal team that the squalor and danger of the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), where he is being held, did not warrant release.
“The public outcry concerning these conditions has come from all corners,” the judge wrote. “But as Combs acknowledges, MDC staff has been able to keep him safe and attend to his needs, even during an incident of threatened violence from an inmate.”
As well as Combs’s bail application, his legal team has also filed a motion calling for him to be acquitted or given a new trial on the prostitution-related charges only.
The judge has not yet responded to this application.
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How the Diddy trial unfolded
How long could Diddy be jailed for?
Combs is due to be sentenced on 3 October and could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
Discussions on sentencing guidelines which followed the jury’s verdict suggest it is unlikely he will be jailed for this long, with an estimate of around two to five years, taking into account time already served.
However, it is ultimately up to Judge Arun Subramanian to decide the rapper’s punishment.
On Friday, Donald Trump was asked during an interview about a potential pardon for Combs following speculation about the issue.
The president said it was unlikely, adding that the rapper was “very hostile” during his presidential campaign.
Combs, who co-founded Bad Boy Records and launched the career of the late Notorious BIG, was for decades a huge figure in pop culture – a Grammy-winning hip-hop artist and business entrepreneur, who presided over an empire ranging from fashion to reality TV.
As well as the criminal conviction, he is also facing several civil lawsuits.
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