Actress Paris Hilton spoke on Wednesday (June 26) about the nightmare she experienced in a youth treatment center and described the experience as “traumatic”. The confessions were made before a committee of the US Congress. The star called for the improvement of these centers, according to the BBC.
The businesswoman also revealed that it was “Forcibly drugged and sexually abused by staff” while she was in a private youth center in Utah. At the time, Paris Hilton was a teenager.
His statements bring to light the so-called “problem teen industry“.
Paris Hilton lived a nightmare in a youth treatment center in Utah. Photo: Archive
While some children are placed with relatives or foster families, others end up in treatment centers that are essentially homes for children – some of whom have complex medical or behavioral problems.
The 43-year-old star accused the “industry” of being more concerned with making money than caring for and dealing with vulnerable children.
Hilton has also spoken about her experience in the treatment center in a book, a documentary, and in interviews.
When she was 16, the actress was taken, in the middle of the night, by strangers from her bed, according to her confessions. The situation got worse and worse as her grades at school were getting lower and lower and her parents were concerned about her behavior.
Her experience in the youth treatment center will affect her for the rest of her life
The parents “they had no idea” about what the institution was really like and they were “continuously lied to and manipulated by staff”Hilton told the committee.
“They thought it would be a normal boarding school”, she added. “And when I got there, there was no therapy. We were constantly being torn down, abused and yelled at.”
Any contact she had with the outside world was monitored, and someone was always there when she spoke to her parents on the phone, according to her confessions.
“So if I said even one negative thing about the institution, they would immediately hang up my phone and then I would be punished and either beaten or sent to solitary confinement“, she also said.
In the same vein, the actress stated that the treatment “inhuman” which if he endures it will affect him for the rest of his life.
She is asking the US authorities to pass a bill called the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act.
Thus, the troubled teen industry would be managed at the federal level so that abuse reporting procedures would be more transparent and efficient. There would also be a set of national guidelines on best practice in centers so that the varied needs of children can be identified and met.
A new report from the Department of Health and Human Services found that many US states are not properly keeping track of how children in these institutions are treated or reporting cases of abuse.
