Reality star Paris Hilton was back on Capitol Hill on Monday, meeting with representatives in hopes of passing a bill to reform residential treatment facilities for troubled teens.
Hilton, 43, has been in Washington, D.C., numerous times over the past three years to advance the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, which passed the Senate unanimously last week. However, there is only one week left in the 118th Congress before it breaks for the holidays, and the bill still hasn’t hit the House floor.
“This journey isn’t over. I can’t celebrate until this bill becomes law, and now it’s up to the U.S. House of Representatives to finish what the Senate started,” Hilton wrote in an open letter shared on Instagram.
Hilton said she hopes the bill will pass the House and land on President Biden’s desk before his term is over. She has spoken for years about suffering abuse in various facilities for wayward teens.
The hotel heiress was first taken to a facility when she was 16 years old in a staged kidnapping. She eventually spent time in four programs, including the Provo Canyon School in Utah.
“I was physically restrained, sexually abused, isolated, overmedicated and stripped of my dignity,” she wrote Monday. “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.”
One version of the Provo Canyon School announced a closure in 2020 — prompting a celebration from Hilton and other former residents — but at least one troubled teen facility is still using the name.
According to Hilton and her allies, various boarding schools, wilderness camps and behavior modification programs make disgruntled teenagers into a $23 billion industry with little federal oversight. The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act would create guardrails for such programs, according to its advocates.
“The House of Representatives has to pass this bill in the next week before the end of this year’s session, or else the bill will die,” Hilton told ABC News on Monday. “We would have to do it all over again.”