Paris Hilton opened up about the emotional and physical abuse she experienced while living at a boarding school in Utah as a teenager.
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In an exclusive by PEOPLE, Paris Hilton described the abuse she suffered while living at the Provo Canyon School during the late 90s for her new YouTube documentary, This Is Paris, which will premier on September 14. Before she was sent to the boarding school, Hilton said she would often sneak out to attend parties and clubs since her parents were very strict. She says, “My parents were so strict that it made me want to rebel. They’d [punish me] by taking away my cell phone, taking away my credit card, but it didn’t work. I would still go out on my own.”
After being fed up with her behavior, Kathy and Rick Hilton sent Paris to various boarding schools when she was 17-years-old to focus on her mental health and behavior with the last school being Provo Canyon. Hilton exclaimed she would wake up to staff members yelling and said, “The staff would say terrible things. They were constantly making me feel bad about myself and bully me. I think it was their goal to break us down. And they were physically abusive, hitting and strangling us. They wanted to instill fear in the kids so we’d be too scared to disobey them.”
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Her classmates also shared their experiences and said they were force-fed medication along with being held down with restraints as a form of punishment.
“I was having panic attacks and crying every single day, I was just so miserable. I felt like a prisoner and I hated life.”
Hilton said she kept the abuse to herself as the school didn’t allow students to speak to their families:
“We were cut off from the outside world. And when I tried to tell them once, I got in so much trouble I was scared to say it again. They would grab the phone or rip up letters I wrote telling me, ‘No one is going to believe you.’ And the staff would tell the parents that the kids were lying. So my parents had no idea what was going on.”
She finally opened up about the abuse 20 years later and hopes the documentary can help her move on.
“And I’m going to watch the movie with my parents — I think it will be good for us, but emotional too. There are no more secrets.”