Paris Hilton Abuse: Is Provo Canyon School still running? Star shares pics taken after alleged abuse
Paris Hilton famously declared in her YouTube Original documentary 'This Is Paris' that she suffered emotional and physical abuse as a teenager when she attended Provo Canyon School in Utah. And on Thursday, January 21, the 39-year-old shared pictures from when she was 18, which were taken shortly after returning home to New York from the boarding school.
Hilton posted the portraits and wrote that she could "see the pain in [her] eyes," adding that her younger self was just "trying to block out the painful memories." She wrote: "These photos were taken when I was 18 and had recently came home from the horrible experiences I went through at #ProvoCanyonSchool. I can see the pain in my eyes. I was so traumatized that I pretended everything was okay, trying to block out the painful memories. 🥺 Looking at this now, I know that the teen me would be so incredibly proud of the woman I am today. Being brave and using my voice to make a difference and save children from having to endure the abuse myself and so many others have had to go through. #iSeeYouSurvivor #BreakingCodeSilence 🙌 "
Getting into the New York party scene at an early age, Hilton used to sneak out from her family residence at the Waldorf Astoria to go underage clubbing, prompting her parents to look for behavioral programs to curtail her wild-child ways. When Hilton turned 17, she was sent away to Provo which she deemed, "the worst of the worst." Kidnapped from her bed at her parent's home in the middle of the night, once she arrived at the school, she was allegedly beaten, drugged, abused (verbally, mentally, and sexually) and forced into solitary confinement.
A year of daily horror, caused her to develop insomnia, depression, trust issues, and crippling nightmares. Hilton made the revelations in 'This Is Paris', in order to speak candidly about the suffering she claimed to have endured at Provo Canyon School. Upon the 'This Is Paris' release, Provo denied the star's abuse allegations, also claiming they had fallen under new management and thus were not liable for any previous wrongdoing, as per TODAY. "They lie to the families and they lie to the children. They're manipulators, so obviously they're going to lie to try to protect themselves from what they've done," Hilton said in a December interview with USA Today.
Provo Canyon School is a psychiatric youth residential treatment center owned and operated by Universal Health Services (UHS). According to the official website of the school, the institution uses an “Acuity Based Care” (ABC) model that recognizes and re-evaluates the strengths and needs of its students. The site also asserts students receive a wide range of interventions including recreational and occupational therapies; individual, group, and art therapies; and substance abuse therapy.
In September 2020, Change.org came up with a petition to close the institution. The petition states: "The Salt Lake Tribune reported that there have been 341 investigations into Provo by the Utah Department of Licensing in the last 5 years and only 27 of those investigations were substantiated. And yet, PCS nor their owner, Universal Health Services, have been held accountable. This facility stands both as a keystone and major influence in this corrupt industry, and its closure would not only be highly symbolic but help to shift attitudes about child treatment programs as a whole. Holding the industry accountable for the very existence of a program like PCS would help to create a chain reaction of similar accountability across the country."