In Paris: The Memoir, Paris Hilton details alleged abuse she endured at boarding school, her decision to get an abortion and her days in the tabloid spotlight.
Paris Hilton is “sliving” to tell the tale.
The Paris in Love star—who recently welcomed her son Phoenix with husband Carter Reum—is opening up like never before in Paris: The Memoir, which was released March 14.
Among the many intimate topics she addresses in her autobiography, the 42-year-old discusses her decision to have an abortion in her twenties, being raped at 15 and the lasting impact her infamous sex tape scandal had on her family and her career.
After first speaking out in her 2020 YouTube documentary This Is Paris about the alleged abuse said she suffered at the Utah boarding school she went to as a teenager, The Simple Life alum divulges more alarming details about the two years she spent in various facilities.
Paris reflects on the tabloid attention she received during the early years of her career—including that infamous Holy Trinity photo with Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan—admitting that “revisiting the aughts from a post-#MeToo/#TimesUp perspective is wrenching.”
“I had fun—tons of fun and I refuse to remember it any other way,” Paris writes of that era. “Other than a few occasions that left me curled up in a ball, I didn’t let haters get to me.”
Jeff Vespa/WireImage
But the DJ did point out the impossible double standard young women in the spotlight were held to at the time.
“We expected girls to be sexualized and then condemned for their sexuality,” she explains. “Punished for both silence and speaking out, told we should accept responsibility for our choices and then called crazy or stupid or slutty if we didn’t live by the rules other people chose for us.”
Now, Paris is living by her own rules. Here are the biggest bombshells we learned from Paris: The Memoir:
Rick Bowmer/AP/ShutterstockThe Alleged Abuse She Endured at Her Boarding Schools
While Paris Hilton has previously opened up about the abuse she said she suffered at several boarding schools she attended as a teenager, the DJ and businesswoman is sharing even more details about her harrowing experience in her Paris: The Memoir. Paris issues a trigger warning before opening up about the trauma she endured during the two years she spent at various CEDU (CEDU Educational Services, Inc.) schools, including Provo Canyon School in Utah.
Paris first recalls begins with being dragged out of her bed in the middle of the night. “My mind instantly went to the obvious,” Paris writes. “I’m about to be raped. I’m about to be murdered. Here the memory shatters—a broken mirror in my mind. Two men. Hands on me.”
From there, Paris details being repeatedly strip-searched, verbally and physically abused and “force-fed drugs intended to dull my wits and make me comply.”
The 42-year-old writes that she made multiple escape attempts from the schools, but was always found and brought back to the facilities, including one time where they “beat the s–t out of” her upon her return.
In February 2021, Paris testified in a Utah court against Provo Canyon School in support of a bill focused on ending abuse in the state’s congregate care facilities. In describing her alleged experiences at the institution, she said, “I was verbally, mentally and physically abused on a daily basis. I was cut off from the outside world and stripped of all my human rights.”
The bill was ultimately passed and Paris continues her advocacy work for survivors of the “Troubled Teen Industry” through her 11:11 Impact Foundation.
In a statement shared to E! News in October 2022, the Provo Canyon School said that the boarding school “was sold by its previous ownership in August 2000.”
“What we can say is that the school provides a structured environment teaching life-skills, providing behavioral health therapy, and continuing education for youth who come to us with pre-existing and complex emotional, behavioral and psychiatric needs,” the statement read. “These youth have not been successful in typical home and school environ
Colin Davey/Getty ImagesShe Was Raped
Paris says she was raped at 15 by a boy she knew who invited her to his house when they ran into each other at the mall. After he kept encouraging her to drink wine coolers, Paris writes that she doesn’t remember much about what happened next, just “broken pieces. Fragments. Echoes. White noise. Black silence.”
“I became aware of a crushing weight on me,” Paris recalls. “Suffocating me. Cracking my ribs. I felt a jolt of panic and tried to get up, but the impulse was lost, as if something had severed my spinal cord. When I tried to scream, there was no air in my lungs. All that came out was a small, raspy ‘stop…what’s happening?’ Until this guy clamped his hand over my mouth—like, aggressively—like, hard.”
Prior to her assault, Paris says she had planned to remain a virgin until marriage, but then chose to have sex with her then-boyfriend, Tori Spelling’s brother Randy Spelling, in an attempt to reclaim her narrative.
“Going forward, it made a much better ‘How I Lost My Virginity’ story,” she writes. “Once upon a time. With a cute boy who loved me.”
While she explains that she’s “hardly thought about it since it happened,” Paris admits that thinking about the rape made her “feel ruined and embarrassed and sick to my stomach, so I shoved it into the deepest, darkest corner of my mind. I refused to see the long shadow it cast.”
Evan Agostini/ImageDirect via Getty ImagesHer Decision to Get An Abortion
Just after The Simple Life premiered in 2003, Paris discovered she was pregnant with her then-boyfriend Jason Shaw‘s child. “I was terrified and heartsick,” Paris recalls. “I felt paralyzed by an anxiety that took root in my body and grew like poison ivy.”
Paris then shares that she decided to get an abortion, which put her “at war” with what she had been raised to believe. “No one can ever know how hard it is to face this impossible choice unless she’s faced it herself,” Paris explains. “It’s an intensely private agony that’s impossible to explain. The only reason I’m talking about it now is that so many women are facing it, and they feel so alone and judged and abandoned. I wantthem to know that they’re not alone, and they don’t owe anyone an explanation. When there is no right way—all that’s left is what is. What you know you have to do. And you do it, even though it breaks your heart.”
While she still looks back on the experience with “sorrow,” Paris writes, “I know I made the right choice.”
“At that moment in my life, I was in no way capable of being a mother,” she continues. “Denying that would have jeopardized the family I hoped to have in the future, at a time when I was healthy and healed.”
Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesParis vs. Pink?
Even though she describes Pink as “generous, evolved, and progressive,” Paris writes that she was disappointed by the singer’s 2006 song “Stupid Girls” after the sex tape was leaked without her consent.
“The whole video is a not-at-all-subtle send-up of ‘porno paparazzi girls’ in general and, specifically, me, in a parody of my infamous sex tape,” Paris explains. “Pink sang about ‘outcasts and girls with ambition’ and said, ‘That’s what I wanna see.’ But she chose not to see it in me.”
Paris stresses that she is not “mad” at Pink and there’s no “feud” between the two women, mostly because, as Paris puts it, “I have the attention span of a gnat, which means I suck at holding grudges. Anyway, anger doesn’t help; honesty does.”
James Devaney/WireImageHer Teen Rebellion
Before parents Rick and Kathy Hilton chose to send her away to school, Paris admits that “sometimes her party nights went on for days” and she knew she was “scaring the living shit out of my parents” with her behavior.
“I knew it was cruel. And dangerous,” she reflects. “I loved my family, and I hated myself for hurting them. I’m making a real effort to understand what this situation was like for my parents. Because I will never understand what they chose to do about it.”
While Paris reveals that she and her mother haven’t spoken often about the abuse she allegedly endured, on the rare occasion when they do discuss it, Kathy explains that they enrolled her at the schools to “save” her. “She says it with absolute certainty, even now, knowing how it all went so wrong,” Paris writes. “‘You would do the same.’ Not in a million f–king years, I think, but I don’t say that out loud.”
Chelsea Lauren/ShutterstockHow Demi Lovato Inspired Her
Before sharing her account of her at the boarding schools in her 2020 documentary This Is Paris, the DJ reveals she had “no intention” of ever sharing her story publicly before “Demi Lovato rocked my world.”
Paris explains that she was “stunned” by “how real, vulnerable, and courageous” the singer was in her 2017 documentary Simply Complicated. Pointing to Demi sharing “a painful reckoning with a difficult past” in the film, Paris says she was “inspired by Demi’s courage” to speak out about her experience.
“Instead of worrying about what it would mean to my brand,” Paris writes , “I started thinking about what it would do to the troubled-teen industry if I stepped out of the shadows and told my truth.”
bauergriffin.comThat Holy Trinity Photo
In 2006, a photograph of Paris with Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan crammed into the front seat of Paris’ car caused a pop culture frenzy. At the time, Paris and Lindsay were in a complicated patch of their friendship—so a snapshot of the duo together with the Princess of Pop unquestionably made headlines, infamously dubbed “The Bimbo Summit” at the time. “I didn’t love the wording, but my bangs looked super cute,” Paris writes. “How often can you nail that, really? Bangs are tricky.”
When the photo’s 15th anniversary in 2021 provoked an examination of the media’s treatment of the three women at the time, Paris says she also reflected on how they had all growns since then.
“I’d just gotten married and was running a massive media and lifestyle conglomerate,” Paris reflects. “Britney had recently ended the outrageous thirteen-year conservatorship that exerted control over her finances and personal life. Lindsay had just gotten engaged and was working on a professional comeback. I was glad for her.”
While she and Lindsay are not “close,” Paris says, “I always wish her well.” And when Britney married Sam Asghari in June 2002, Paris was in attendance and describes the “Piece of Me” singer as a “gorgeous angel princess bride.”
Michael Kovac/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty ImagesThe Origin of Her Iconic Catchphrases
Fun fact: It was Nicky, not Paris, who first uttered the infamous “That’s hot” line, though Paris says that the phrase “resonated” with her so much when she first heard it that she wrote it in her diary.
“It’s such a great statement, isn’t it?” she poses. “Positive. Unpretentious. The word hot is evocative; there’s energy in it. If you see something you appreciate, shout it out. Toss a spark of positivity into the world. It’s like ‘I see you’—but hotter.”
As for her other catchphrase—”Sliving”—Paris explains that she accidentally invented it during a Halloween party several years ago.
“I started to say ‘slaying’ but took a sharp left toward ‘living your best life,’ and ‘sliving’ came out,” she recalls. “We all died laughing, but I was thinking, That’s a great word. Ima trademark that shit like yesterday. I may have been slightly tipsy. But it is a great word! It’s a movement and a lifestyle.”
Kevin Mazur/WireImageBethenny Frankel Was Her Nanny
Before she was the breakout star of The Real Housewives of New York City, the Skinnygirl mogul was Paris and Nicky’s babysitter, thanks to her close friendship with their aunt and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills‘ cast member Kyle Richards.
Tasked with picking up the Hilton girls from school, Paris shares that Bethenny often took them shopping and “sometimes we’d meet up with Kyle and go ice-skating or get candy from the Mobile Mart.”
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagicHer First Time Clubbing
Paris was just 12 years old when she went to her first club, going to a party after she and her sister Nicky Hilton attended a New Kids on the Block concert with Pia Zadora. Paris was immediately drawn to the party scene.
“Unfortunately, just as I was soaking all this in, we bumped into my mom’s sister,” Paris recalls. “Aunt Kyle was like, ‘WTF!’ She dragged Pia aside for a brief, hissy conversation and then took us home, but I knew I had to go back.”
Shortly after, Paris attempted to sneak into a club with Khloé Kardashian, who was in middle school at the time, so she put “full makeup, a long red wig, and a floppy black hat” on the future reality star. “I told her,” Paris remembers, “‘If anyone asks, your name is Betsey Johnson.'”
Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesHer History With Nicole Richie
Friends since they were young children, Paris and Nicole Richie went on to co-star in five seasons of The Simple Life from 2003 to 2007, though they had a falling-out around the time the show ended. They’ve since quashed their beef, with Nicole attending Paris’ wedding in November 2021.
“Nicole Richie and I were ride or die from our terrible twos,” Paris writes, “and we’ll stay that way until the world ends. Nicole is so genuinely kind and sweet, she catches people off guard with her raunchy one-liners, and the reaction she gets from people is comedy gold. Comedy has to be fearless, and Nicole doesn’t hesitate.”
Paris also reveals that The Simple Life producers initially envisioned the Hilton sisters fronting the Fox reality show and though she “begged Nicky to do it with me,” Paris says their parents were not into the idea, nor was Nicky. “‘Don’t be insane,’ Nicky said,” Paris recalls. “‘You’ll embarrass yourself.'”
Jason Merritt/FilmMagicHer Friendship With Kim Kardashian
Paris first met The Kardashians reality star when Faye Resnick recommended she hire Kim to organize her wardrobe and the two formed an instant connection. Paris even describes the SKIMS founder as one of the few people she could “trust and depend on” at the time.
“Kim had started a business where she went into the closets of famous people, took whatever they didn’t love, and sold it on eBay,” Paris explains. “It was genius and generated tens of thousands of dollars for charity and fun money. She did an incredible job, and we had so much fun working together. We balanced each other. I was a disorganized night owl; Kim was an efficient early riser.”
Still, Paris recalls giving the future KKW Beauty founder a piece of advice she obviously took to heart.
“Kim Kardashian and I were making frittata and French toast coated with Frosted Flakes for breakfast one morning,” Paris shares, “and she said, ‘I don’t know anyone who parties as hard as you do and looks as good as you do.’ Skin care. Seriously. If you take nothing else from my story, receive this: Skin care is sacred.”
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