Paris Hilton urged Congress on Wednesday to make changes in the nation's child welfare system, describing her own mistreatment as a teenager in residential schools as illustrative of the urgency. "These programs promised growth, healing and support but instead did not allow me to speak, move freely or look out a window for two years," Hilton testified to the House Ways and Means Committee in Washington, People reports. The reality star added: "I was force-fed medications and sexually abused by the staff. I was violently restrained and dragged down hallways, stripped naked and thrown into solitary confinement."
Hilton has been critical of the $50 billion industry she calls a "tough love" teen course-correction business that includes therapeutic boarding schools, military-style boot camps, juvenile justice facilities, and behavior-modification programs, per the Guardian. The celebrity urged greater protections for children in the care of such institutions, provisions contained in the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act. When her parents sent her to a series of residential programs as a remedy for rebellious behavior, she said, they "fell for the misleading marketing of the troubled teen industry." Hilton said her phone calls were monitored, preventing her from telling her parents what was happening to her. (More Paris Hilton stories.)
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