Paris Hilton bill to reform child treatment facilities passes House

WASHINGTON (AP) – The House passed legislation Wednesday requiring more oversight of juvenile treatment facilities, a feat for the hotel heir Paris Hilton which has spent years lobbying lawmakers to regulate an industry marred by allegations of child abuse.

The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act received overwhelming bipartisan support in the House after passing the Senate unanimously last week. It will now go to the president Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.

“This moment is proof that our voices matter, that speaking out can spark change, and that no child should ever have to endure the horrors of abuse in silence,” Hilton said in a social media post after the vote. “I did this for the younger version of myself and the youth who were senselessly taken from us by the Troubled Teen industry.”

Hilton has spent the past several years testifying about the abuse she says she suffered years ago at a boarding school in Utah. She was sent to Provo Canyon School for 11 months at age 17, where she says she was mentally and physically abused, recalling that staff members would beat her, force her to take unknown pills, watch her shower and send her to solitary confinement without clothes as punishment. The 43-year-old said the treatment was so “traumatizing” that she has suffered nightmares and insomnia for years.

Details of the abuse were also depicted in a documentary she released, titled “This is Paris”, released in September 2020.

The legislation passed this week would establish an interagency task force under the Department of Health & Human Services it would bring greater transparency about the treatment of youth in these programs, especially when staff use restraints and seclusion as forms of punishment. Hilton’s advocacy has helped change laws to protect minors in at least eight states, including Hilton’s home state of California, where similar legislation takes effect on January 1.