The Provo, Utah boarding school where Paris Hilton alleged she was abused as a teenager is losing its license, according to the BBC.
“For more than fifty years, children came forward with stories of abuse, neglect, and trauma,” Hilton tells Rolling Stone
in a statement. “Today, the state confirmed what survivors have known all along: Provo Canyon School failed the children in its care. I was one of those children. I know what it feels like to cry for help and believe no one is coming. Today, children still inside that facility know someone is finally coming to protect them.”
The Utah Department of Health and Human services (DHHS) sent a letter to the Provo Canyon School on Monday (July 7) saying that all services at its Springville campus must end by Aug. 6 due to the “provider’s chronic, ongoing noncompliance with applicable rules, statutes, or requirements.”
The notice cited several instances in which the DHHS believed the school did not comply with rules. These included “engaging in an unnecessary restraint and aggressive physical contact” with one resident, and “failing to ensure that each client has the right to be free from potential harm or acts of violence.” The school’s administrators have 15 days to request a hearing about the decision.
Reps for the Provo Canyon School did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment. Per the BBC, the school told local media it was “evaluating all available legal and administrative options, including an appeal.”
Hilton, 45, spoke about her experiences at Provo Canyon School in the 2020 documentary, This Is Paris. She said her parents sent her there in the mid-Nineties, when she was a teen, because they felt her partying had gotten out of control. While there, Hilton alleged that she was beaten, placed in solitary confinement for up to 20 hours, and given unknown pills. Her parents were unaware of what she was going through, she said.
In her statement about the school’s license being revoked, Hilton added, “The little girl in me who was told she would never be believed feels so validated today. We were telling the truth. We always were. No institution is too powerful to be held accountable. When survivors refuse to stay silent, change is possible.”
Hilton also celebrated the news on Instagram. “While nothing can erase the trauma so many of us endured, today is a powerful step toward protecting future generations,” she wrote. “To every survivor who shared their story, every advocate who stood beside us, and everyone who believed us — this moment belongs to all of us. I am endlessly grateful for every single person who helped make this happen.”
Regarding Hilton’s allegations, the school released a statement in 2020 that its ownership changed hands in 2000; that year, the school’s parent company, Universal Health Services, paid $117 million to resolve alleged violations of the False Claims Act, which, among other protections, seeks to ensure patients receive adequate and appropriate services.
In 2021, Hilton spoke on Capitol Hill to support a bill of rights for teens in such facilities. “At Provo Canyon School in Utah, I was given clothes with a number on the tag. I was no longer me, I was only number 127,” she told members of Congress. “I was forced to stay indoors for 11 months straight, no sunlight, no fresh air. These were considered privileges. I was strangled, slapped across the face, watched in the shower by male staff, called vulgar names, forced to take medication without a diagnosis, not given a proper education, thrown into solitary confinement in a room covered in scratch marks and smeared in blood and so much more.”
The celebrity levied additional allegations of sex abuse against the school’s staff in a 2022 New York Timesvideo op-ed. “Very late at night — this would be around three or four in the morning — they would take myself and other girls into this room, and they would perform medical exams,” she claimed. “This wasn’t even with a doctor. It was with a couple different staff members, where they would have us lay on the table and put their fingers inside of us. And I don’t know what they were doing, but it was definitely not a doctor.” That year, the Times reported the school was facing a lawsuit in which 49 plaintiffs alleged a former medical director had abused them sexually.
ABC’s Springville, Utah affiliate, KTVX, reported that the school faced emergency sanctions in May after authorities learned it had allegedly delayed medical treatment for a 13-year-old client, whose family filed a suit. The filing also claimed that a teen girl had developed a kidney condition after medical treatment was delayed for nine days.
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