Paris Hilton celebrates as child abuse bill passes House, but at least 1 fellow survivor is skeptical

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that has been championed for weeks on Capitol Hill by hotel heiress and reality TV star Paris Hilton. The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, which will establish a group under the Department of Health and Human Services to publicize the treatment of youths in these programs was unanimously approved in the Senate last week and will now make its way to the president’s desk to be signed into law.

“Today is a day I will never forget,” Hilton posted on X after the vote. “After years of sharing my story and advocating on Capitol Hill, the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act has officially passed the U.S Congress. This moment is proof that our voices matter, that speaking out can spark change, and that no child should ever endure the horrors of abuse in silence.”

The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act seeks to impose larger federal safeguards on youth residential programs across the country — more commonly referred to as the Troubled Teen Industry (TTI). According to the American Bar Association, as of 2021, an estimated 120,000 to 200,000 young people resided “in some type of group home, residential treatment center, boot camp, or correctional facility” and the Troubled Teen Industry as a whole received roughly $23 million in annual public funds.

In June, a Senate committee released a scathing report highlighting the findings of a two-year investigation into federally funded residential treatment facilities. The report found, among other things, that “children suffer routine harm” in such facilities, including “sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, unsafe and unsanitary conditions, and inadequate provision of behavioral health treatment.”

Hilton, who was in Washington, D.C., this week to push for the bill’s passage in the House, has been a prominent advocate in support of the legislation for the last three years. Hilton attended the Provo Canyon School, a TTI treatment center in Utah, for 11 months when she was a teenager and has been open about the trauma she says she experienced while there. She detailed the experience in her memoir, 2020 documentary and in a 2021 op-ed article published in the Washington Post. The Provo Canyon School is still operating today and issued a statement in response to Hilton’s allegations in February 2021 denying that it uses “solitary confinement” or “any drugs … as a means of discipline.”

“We welcome collaborative discussion, change and opportunity to enhance the care and services provided in our level of residential care,” the school said in its statement. “We seek to be transparent in our operations and practices as far as it also ensures the rights, respect and dignity of the patients we treat.”

While Hilton celebrated the bill’s success on Wednesday, Jen Robison, another woman who went to Provo Canyon School and who worked with Hilton on TTI advocacy back in 2019, told Yahoo News she was skeptical about the potential impact of the legislation.

“I worry that this bill, as it is being presented to the public, is likely to do more for public image and political careers than it is to actually stop institutional child abuse,” she said. “As I have understood it, while being a step forward in potentially creating definitions and gathering data, [it] is not going to create any immediate protection for children being abused in this system. Nor is it bringing any consequences for the people and institutions which perpetrate child abuse.”

Robison co-founded Youth in Disorder, a major online resource advocating against TTI programs and institutional child abuse. Her parents sent her to Provo Canyon in 2003, because she felt depressed at 13 years old. In an earlier interview with Yahoo News in 2022, Robinson described Provo as “a nightmare place,” where she recalled being held in “isolation cells.” Robison was there for two years.

“I believe that Paris as an individual has the best intentions and that her stepping forward undeniably helped amplify the thousands of other voices who have tried to make this issue understood for decades,” Robison said following the House vote on Wednesday. “However, with a system deeply corrupt as the Troubled Teen Industry, I am always skeptical of political work around it.”

Hilton’s allegations of abuse at Provo Canyon School

In an Instagram post on Monday, Hilton reflected on her experience at the Provo Canyon School when she was 16 years old.

“As a teenager, I was sent to youth residential treatment facilities where I endured abuse that no child should ever experience,” she said. “I was physically restrained, sexually abused, isolated, overmedicated and stripped of my dignity. I was told I didn’t matter, that I was the problem and that no one would believe me if I spoke up — not even my family.”

In her Washington Post op-ed, Hilton described how she was woken up in the night by two strangers with handcuffs as part of a “parent-approved kidnapping” to take her to one of the four TTI facilities she was sent to as a teenager.

“Like countless other parents of teens, my parents had searched for solutions to my rebellious behavior,” Hilton wrote. “They fell for the misleading marketing of the ‘troubled teen industry.’”

In total, Hilton says she was sent to four different residential treatment programs as a teen and has alleged that she was subjected to both physical and psychological abuse at all of them.

Bipartisan support for the bill

The bill, which was sponsored by Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, has received bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, first passing unanimously in the Senate and then receiving 373 favorable votes in the House.

“One child experiencing abuse is too many,” Georgia Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter, a Republican, said in a statement issued Wednesday. “This bill adds transparency and oversight to an industry with too many bad actors to it.”

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, of California, agreed, saying “Children across the country are at risk of abuse and neglect, due to a lack of transparency in institutional youth treatment programs” and “the industry has gone unchecked for too long.”

The bill will now be sent to President Biden’s desk to be signed into law.

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Yahoo!News