Paris Hilton says the “pain and abuse” she faced as a teenager at so-called behaviour camps paved the way for her to find the “most meaningful work” of her life.
In 2020, the hotel heiress released a documentary, This Is Paris, which detailed the treatment she and other victims endured at tough love camps in the US.
The socialite said she was subjected to “a parent-approved kidnapping” at four different youth facilities, was “force-fed medications and sexually abused by staff”.
The entrepreneur tells Sky News that speaking up was extremely difficult.
“These places, they really instil that shame in you where you are so ashamed that you don’t even want to speak about or talk about or think about it, and that’s such a powerful muzzle for abusers.
“I had no idea how the world would react but it was just like this outpouring of love and tens of thousands of survivors reaching out to me, coming up to me on the street and just saying, ‘Thank you so much for telling your story. No one has ever believed me, I haven’t spoken to my family in this many years and you know it’s just affected my whole life and now since you told your story, now my family believes me’.
“It just showed me the power in being vulnerable and real, even when it’s scary, even when it hurts, that if I can tell my story and make a difference in other people’s lives and make them feel safe to be able to come and tell their story.”
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Since her documentary aired on YouTube, the 44-year-old has testified numerous times before Congress and has been a leading advocate against the “troubled teen industry”.
“I’ve now changed 15 state laws and passed two federal bills to protect children so they don’t have to go through the pain and abuse that myself and so many others have, and that is the most meaningful work of my life. I’m so extremely proud of that work.”
She says this advocacy work has become a “huge focus” for her and that she wants to “continue on the fight because this is not only happening in the States, it’s happening all around the world”.
Hilton was the leader of “It girls” in 2000s Hollywood, which included Kim Kardashian and Nicole Richie, and was one of the most photographed people of that time.
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Reflecting on her 20s, she says relentless stories about her in tabloids along with coming to terms with what had happened to her at the treatment facilities made for a “very hard and difficult time”.
“Especially during the early 2000s, the media was just extremely cruel to myself and to other young women and I don’t think I ever really gave myself credit for how much I survived back then because it was a lot.
“It was just very painful… to constantly feel judged and misunderstood and underestimated, and people were just so mean.”
She says the industry “has changed a lot from back then” and sees it as a positive that women in the spotlight now “don’t have to go through what myself and a few other women had to go through”.
Her new documentary film, Infinite Icon: A Visual Memoir, takes a look back through her life and career in the spotlight as she prepares to return with new music.
“It’s been so fun just to look back on everything and just see in my career how I’ve always been so ahead of my time, even through fashion, reality shows, through all of it, how there were so many things that I did first and now seeing so many people inspired to this day.”
Large elements of the film, however, were deeply impacted by the LA fires last year in which her Malibu beach house burnt down.
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It features Paris performing her songs on stage, including her 2006 debut single Stars Are Blind.
Infinite Icon: A Visual Memoir is in cinemas on 30 January.
