Everything We Learned From Paris Hilton’s Documentary: Abusive Exes, Traumatic Schooling and More

Credit: YouTube

Everything We Learned From Paris Hilton’s Documentary: Abusive Exes, Traumatic Schooling and More

The real Paris Hilton. Although the heiress has been known for years as a character, in YouTube’s This Is Paris documentary, 39-year-old Hilton reveals her true self — and her traumatic upbringing. "Something happened in my childhood that I never talked about with anyone," she says in the opening moments of the documentary, which will be released on Monday, September 14. "I still have nightmares about it. I wish I could bring, like, a camera into my dreams, and, like, show you what it's like. It's terrifying. And I relive that every night. I experienced it and to this day I am still traumatized and I think the only way to have these nightmares stop is to do something about it." Throughout the doc, the DJ opens up for the first time about being sent away to multiple different boarding schools — as her parents called them — and the trauma that she experienced there, that ultimately changed her life. "I wanted to do something, but at the same time I didn't want to hurt my brand," she shares in the video. "I can't have this be part of my business, and people won't understand. But if I don't do this it's going to continue to happen and I'm going to continue being traumatized and think about it the rest of my life." Ultimately, she comes together with multiple other survivors of one of the schools — Provo Canyon in Utah, which she calls "the worst of the worst." Together, they begin a campaign to expose the abuse they’re alleging, with hopes that other young children will not experience the same. The documentary also gives a look into the true Paris, who her sister, Nicky Hilton, says is “like a boy at heart,” and her relationship with those closest to her — her sister and her mother, Kathy Hilton, as well as her team. It also details why she’s pushed so many people away, her insomnia, why she spends nearly 16 hours a day on her phone and much more. [jwplayer Vtsuovix] “This is something I’ve never done before, just from always playing a character, being this persona. That’s all I’ve ever known or ever been,” the former reality star told Us Weekly exclusively about the doc. “Even watching, I was like, ‘Oh my God, can we cut this?’ They’re like, ‘Nope, you don’t have editing approval.’ It’s a very vulnerable position, but it’s also very empowering. I feel, especially it being 2020, I think it’s all about being real and authentic and showing who you truly are. Some parts are very traumatic or hard in my life and I want to be able to tell my story so people can understand me and also understand themselves.” As her sister explains in the special, Paris is nothing like the “character” that she’s portrayed and is almost the opposite. She doesn’t care about her clothes or shoes — in the doc, she admits she wears sweats every day and hasn’t worn most of what she has. Additionally, as she’s recently revealed, the baby voice Paris has used through the years is not real. “In everything else, I’ve always had like the baby voice and I’ve always been so different,” she told Us. “I don’t blame people for having misconceptions, because I created it with that character, who everyone thought was a real person. … Now I’m actually showing people that that was not really me. I was in on the joke.” Scroll through the gallery below for the biggest revelations from the documentary. [podcast_block]

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Becoming Paris

When Paris was in high school, the family moved to New York City and she got “addicted to the nightlife,” despite her very strict parents. “I just felt like the queen of the night. That's where I really became Paris.”

However, that caused her parents to worry and try to keep her inside, ultimately locking her in her room. When that didn’t work, they sent her to “emotional growth schools” where she had all her personal belongings taken away and she was forced to do manual labor. When she tried escaping, she claims she was caught and abused. “We ran through cornfields, through mountains,” she says. “The guys that worked at the camp grabbed us, and we got back and they literally beat the hell out of us in front of everyone.”

Later, she was sent to “the worst of the worst" schools, Provo Canyon School in Utah — and remained there for 11 months.

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A Horrifying Trauma

Paris alleges that she suffered many types of abuse while attending Provo and that she believes the staff “got off on torturing children and seeing them naked.” Additionally, she claims that everyone was prescribed pills. She stopped taking them and hid them in a napkin. When they found out, she was put into solitary confinement.

"They would make people take their clothes off and go in there for, like, 20 hours," Paris says. "I felt like I was going crazy. Someone was in the other room, there was like, a straitjacket. … I was just freezing, was starving, was alone. I was scared."

The socialite compared the traumatizing event to those that happened in the 1975 film, One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest. At 18, she was able to leave and never told her family about the abuse — until the documentary.

"Originally opened in 1971, Provo Canyon School was sold by its previous ownership in August 2000," the school told E! in a statement. "We therefore cannot comment on the operations or patient experience prior to this time."

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Revealing Her Secret

When a producer asked Kathy, 61, if she knew about the solitary confinement, she said no and looked truly shocked. "I couldn't tell you guys because every time I tried I got punished by them or they would say, 'We're just going to tell your parents you're a liar, and they're not going to believe you,’” she later tells her mom, who started to cry. “Basically they just told me that so many different times that I was afraid to even say anything or bring it up."

In addition to telling her mom, she shows her a photo of herself participating in a campaign called #BreakingCodeSilence to speak out against the school. She reached out to other survivors — her former roommate and classmates — who also had been traumatized and were ready to share their stories.

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Past Abuse

The New York native claims during the doc that she was emotionally, verbally and/or physically abused by five men in her past. At one point, she pulls up shocking photos that made headlines in 2004 in which she had a bloody lip and bruises on her arms.

"We just got in an argument. I was trying to leave his house and he just got really mad and was just grabbing me and pulling me,” she says to the producer, adding that she’s had so much worse things happen that she doesn’t really remember that specific incident. "I've been strangled, phones thrown at me, computers, and I accepted it because I almost thought it was so normal — like, he loves me so much that he's going this crazy. I just wanted love so bad that I was willing to accept being hit or yelled at or screamed at or strangled … a lot of things."

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The Sex Tape

Paris gets emotional discussing her 2004 sex tape with Rick Salomon. "That was a private moment of a teenage girl, not in her right headspace, but everyone was watching it and laughing like it's something funny," she shares. "If that happened today, it would not be the same story at all, but they made me the bad person.”

She also says that she felt the release “was like being electronically raped” and it was painful for her to hear people think she did it on purpose. “After that, all of these leaked tapes came out. It became, like, a blueprint to becoming famous. … I didn’t need to do that.”

At one point, Paris states that she doesn’t think the sex tape would have ever happened if it weren’t for her experience at Provo. “I was just so lost and desperate for love that I found the worst possible person,” the Simple Life alum says.

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A Living Nightmare

The former reality star details her “horrible insomnia” which is caused by a recurring nightmare that makes her “scared to go to bed,” despite being so exhausted. In the dream, two people try to pull her out of bed and say, “Do you want this to happen the easy way or the hard way?” and she tries to run away.

Paris later reveals the nightmare was caused by a real-life event, in which two people came into her room and pulled her out of bed to take her to one of the schools.

“I thought I was being kidnapped. I started screaming for my mom and dad, like, 'Help me.' And no one came,” she recalls. “As they were taking me I saw my parents standing by the door crying.”

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Show Me the Money

In one moment, Nicky, 36, tells her sister she needed to take time for herself instead of constantly working. "I will not stop until I make a billion dollars," the model says. "And then I think I can relax. I know it sounds crazy. I don't know, I just don't want to have to worry. I don't ever want to have to worry about anything.”

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Having Children

After spending time with Nicky and 4-year-old niece Lily-Grace, Paris admits she thought she’d have a child, noting she feels “depressed” when she’s there without children. However, she did freeze her eggs and says she’d want a daughter first, whom she’d name London — but doesn’t have the time.

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Dating Struggles

Paris briefly opens up about her engagement to Chris Zylka, which ended in 2018 after nearly two years together. “Deep down I just felt kind of trapped,” she says. “When you get married, you're forced to grow up. I am afraid to grow up. I know I am grown up, but I think after being at those schools you lose your childhood. … I'm freaked out by people, especially men."

The documentary also shows her brief relationship with Aleks Novakovic and their blowout fight that took place moments after she hit the stage at Tomorrowland in July 2019. The fight led to their split.

The Confessions of an Heiress author later detailed her struggles to trust anyone; after the split, she revealed her giant collection of laptops. "Any time I get a new boyfriend I get a full new computer because they always break into my computers or they'll scream at me and threaten me, 'Give me your password now,'" she says after her split. "One night I was with one of my ex-boyfriends, and we got in a big fight. I was on my computer ignoring him because I felt really uncomfortable, and he just grabbed it from me and just slammed it on the floor."

Earlier in the doc, Novakovic came over to take care of her dogs while she traveled and she set up a spy-cam, in order to know what he was doing inside her home.

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The Power of Influence

“After being at that school, I didn’t want anyone to know, I didn’t want to be embarrassed I was so obsessed with looking perfect on the outside,” she says, detailing how she became the original influencer, basically creating the selfie.

“Now I see the little girls who are 10 years old, 9 years old,” Paris shares. “They're trying to get the perfect selfie, they're putting the filters on, they can't even look at themselves in the phone without putting a filter [on]. I can't even imagine a 13-year-old girl today. I do feel responsible for it.”

She continues: "Everyone says I'm the original influencer but sometimes I feel like I helped create a monster."

That said, she can’t stop looking at her phone, admitting she spends — on average — 16 hours a day looking at social media. “When you add up all those hours, it's literally like years of your life spent just looking at a phone," the House of Wax star shares. "It's just so beyond."

This Is Paris premieres on YouTube Tuesday, September 14.