The House passed legislation on Wednesday requiring increased control of youth residential treatment centers, a victory for hotel heiress Paris Hilton, who has spent years pressing politicians to regulate an industry plagued by child abuse allegations.
The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act passed the Senate unanimously last week and now has broad bipartisan support in the House. It now goes to 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 wrote on social media 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 last few years testifying about the torture she claims she received years ago at a Utah boarding school. She was taken to Provo Canyon School for 11 months at the age of 17, where she claims she was tormented psychologically and physically. She recalls staff members beating her, forcing her to swallow strange drugs, watching her shower, and sending her to solitary confinement without clothes as punishment. The 43-year-old claims the therapy was so “traumatizing” that she has had nightmares and insomnia for years.
Details of the abuse were also documented in a documentary she released in September 2020, named “This is Paris”.
The measure passed this week would create an interagency work group under the Department of Health and Human Services to increase transparency regarding the treatment of adolescents in these programs, particularly when staff utilize shackles and seclusion rooms as means of punishment. Hilton’s campaign has helped reform laws to protect kids in at least eight states, including her home state of California, where identical legislation will take effect on January 1.