“I am here to be a voice for those who cannot speak,” the socialite said after detailing some of the alleged abuse she suffered at the first of four behavior correction residences she attended as a young girl.
LOS ANGELES – Paris Hilton testified Wednesday before a U.S. congressional committee about the “inhumane treatment” she suffered at a boarding school as a teenager and called for revamping child welfare programs to prevent other young people from living through the same experience.
“I’m here to be a voice for those who can’t speak out,” the socialite said after detailing some of the alleged abuse she suffered at the first of four behavior correction residences she was in as a youth.
“I was forced to take medication and sexually abused. I was violently restrained and dragged through the halls, stripped naked and locked in solitary confinement,” said Hilton, who was also a businesswoman and singer.
Hilton, who was a boarder at Provo Canyon School in Utah as a teenager, had already mentioned this episode of her past in her memoir “Paris: The Memoir” and in several media interviews.
This Wednesday in Washington she noted that her parents were “completely misled and manipulated by this for-profit industry” about the “inhumane treatment” she was being subjected to.
“So can you imagine the treatment that the state can provide by not having people regularly inspecting them?” he said.
Hilton, who in recent years has become an advocate for children’s rights, exposed the case of a 16-year-old resident of a public foster home who was killed for having “innocently thrown a sandwich in the cafeteria.”
According to the influencer, the young girl was “violently restrained for 10 minutes” at the hands of eight staff members: “They killed her on the dining room floor in front of dozens of children… the state could have prevented this”.
The also DJ, a mother of two young children, expressed support for the bipartisan effort by the Ways and Means Committee to reauthorize Title IV-B of the Social Security Act on child welfare, which expired in 2021.
He also highlighted the importance of economic support for families so they do not have to take their children to these centers and demanded dignified conditions for those who have to reside in these spaces.
“It costs approximately $800 to $1,000 a day to place a young person in a foster care facility, that’s significantly more than it would cost to care for them in their own communities. What is more important, protecting corporate profits or protecting the lives of young people?” he questioned.
In 2021, Hilton also spoke about his teen experience before a state Senate committee at the Utah Capitol to push for the creation of a bill that called for more government oversight of these types of institutions.