Paris Hilton Breaks Silence Over Abuse She Claims She Experienced at Boarding School
Paris Hilton is ready to share her story—including previously buried childhood trauma and abuse the famous heiress she experienced at boarding school.
In August, Hilton shared the trailer for her new documentary, a YouTube Original entitled This Is Paris, set to premiere in September. In the trailer, Hilton cryptically acknowledged the trauma she experienced as a teenager, an ordeal that she said she never discussed with anyone, including her family. Now, she&aposs sharing more details in an exclusive interview with People.
As a teenager living in New York City, the reality star says she often rebelled against her parents and their strict rules. As she explains in the interview published on August 22, Hilton would sneak out, go to clubs or parties around the city without their consent.
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"They’d [punish me] by taking away my cell phone, taking away my credit card, but it didn’t work. I would still go out on my own,” Hilton tells People. Soon, however, her parents had enough and sent her to a series of boarding schools to correct her behavior, including the Provo Canyon School in Utah, where Hilton says she was physically and emotionally abused on a near-daily basis.
“It was supposed to be a school, but [classes] were not the focus at all,” Hilton continues. “From the moment I woke up until I went to bed, it was all day screaming in my face, yelling at me, continuous torture.”
Hilton claims the staff at the school would say “terrible things” to her and her fellow students on top of physical abuse. “They were constantly making me feel bad about myself and bully me,” she says. "I think it was their goal to break us down. And they were physically abusive, hitting and strangling us. They wanted to instill fear in the kids so we’d be too scared to disobey them.”
According to People, three of Hilton&aposs former classmates corroborate her story in the documentary, sharing their own stories of abuse as well. As for what viewers learn from her abuse, Hilton says she simply wants schools like this shut down.
“I want these places shut down,” Hilton says. “I want them to be held accountable. And I want to be a voice for children and now adults everywhere who have had similar experiences. I want it to stop for good and I will do whatever I can to make it happen.”
People reached out to the school, which provided the following statement:
“Originally opened in 1971, Provo Canyon School was sold by its previous ownership in August 2000. We therefore cannot comment on the operations or patient experience prior to this time.”
Beyond sharing her story, Paris Hilton also hopes the new documentary will let people get to know who she really is, rather than the character she&aposs portrayed in the public for decades. “Everything I’ve ever done before was more of me just playing that character again,” Hilton says in the trailer for the film. “But with this I really just wanted to pull the curtain back and show my real life and talk about things that were very hard to talk about and things that I’ve experienced in life that I’ve never talked about before.”
You can read the entire interview with People now. This is Paris premieres on YouTube on Sept. 14.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
