Reality TV socialite Paris Hilton spoke at Capitol Hill to spur lawmakers to support a bill that protects the rights of children placed in congregate care facilities.
Hilton announced the Accountability for Congregate Care Act while flanked by the bill’s co-sponsors Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., Rep. Adam Schiff D-Calif., Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and other institutional abuse survivors.
“For 20 years I couldn’t sleep at night as memories of physical violence, the feeling of loneliness, the loss of peers rushed through my mind when I shut my eyes,” Hilton said. “This was not just insomnia. This was trauma.”
Hilton had previously disclosed her painful experiences at psychiatric treatment facilities she was forcibly placed in as a teen in her 2020 documentary “This Is Paris.”
On Wednesday, the successful entrepreneur described how she was woken up in her home by “two large men entering my bedroom, asking me if I wanted to go the easy way or the hard way,” when her parents chose to ship her off to the first facility.
“Thinking I was being kidnapped I screamed for my parents and as I was being physically dragged out of my house I saw them crying in the hallway. They didn’t come to my rescue that night,” Hilton recalled. “My parents were promised that tough love would fix me and that sending me across the country was the only way.”
She went on to describe the conditions she endured during the two-year period she was confined at four different facilities.
“My experience at each one haunts me to this day. I was strangled, slapped across the face, locked in the shower by male staff, called vulgar names, forced to take medication without a diagnosis, not given a proper education, thrown into solitary confinement in a room covered in scrape marks and smeared in blood, and so much more.”
She also detailed how she was denied sunlight and fresh air for the eleven months she spent at a Utah facility.
“These were considered privileges. Children were regularly hit, thrown into walls and even sexually abused at Provo [Canyon School in Utah]. I wish I could tell you that what I experienced and witnessed was unique and even rare, sadly it’s not.”
“Every day in America children in congregate care settings are being physically, emotionally and sexually abused,” Hilton continued. “Children are even dying at the hands of those responsible for their care.”
She announced that the Act is a bill of rights that would ensure that children placed in congregate care facilities are provided with “a safe and humane environment.”
“Ensuring children are safe from institutional abuse isn’t a Republican or Democratic issue. It’s a basic human rights issue that requires immediate attention,” Hilton said.
“On behalf of hundreds of thousands of institutional abuse survivors across America, I urge Congress and President Biden to make this bill the law of the land and give young people in congregate care the rights and protections that they so desperately need and deserve.”
On Thursday she met with Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who’s home state Utah passed legislation to protect teens after Hilton testified about her experience in March.
.@ParisHilton has made substantial efforts on reforming Utah’s residential treatment centers for troubled teens—I’m grateful she’s now advocating at the federal level. pic.twitter.com/pP9t7kUlWd
— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) October 21, 2021
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