Paris Hilton is finally ready to talk about the agonizing ordeal she went through as a teen when she was sent away to a wilderness reform school. The 39-year-old party girl turned entrepreneur says that the experience still gives her “nightmares” over two decades later. The DJ gives a hint at her traumatic experience in the trailer which dropped for her upcoming YouTube Originals documentary, This Is Paris, which you can watch above.
As Paris is seen DJ’ing in front of a massive audience in Belgium, her sister Nicky Hilton Rothschild, 36, says “They say [with] trauma, the mind may forget, but the body never forgets. It’s trapped in you, and it can come out whenever.” Paris is then shown taking off her makeup and crawling under the covers of her bed as she explains in a voice over, “I don’t even know who I am sometimes. I didn’t used to be that way.” She’s then seen in videos from her youth, as Paris admits, “Something happened in my childhood that I’ve never talked about with anyone.”
“I just heard screaming bloody murder,” Nicky recalls while discussing the past with Paris and their mom Kathy Hilton, 61. “But I couldn’t tell you guys, because every time I tried, I would get punished by them. I still have nightmares about it,” Paris replies. Clips are then shown of a teenage Paris in front of a bunk bed with what appears to be her dad’s voice exclaiming excitedly, “Here were are at Paris’ new school!” Kathy and Nicky are seen in the room with her, and later walking down the hall of the dormitory.
“The only thing that saved my sanity was thinking about who I wanted to become when I got out of there. I just created this brand and this persona and this character, and I’ve been stuck with her ever since,” the heiress goes on to explain, apparently referring to her party girl image and “spoiled airhead” that she portrayed on her early aughts Fox reality series The Simple Life.
Paris told Naomi Campbell during the Apr. 17 episode of the supermodel’s YouTube show No Filter about how she was taken from her Beverly Hills home and put into the wilderness camp school when discussing the upcoming documentary. “I talked about a lot of things which I’ve never discussed, such as one night I was taken from my room and put into this school, which they ended up closing them down but now they’re reopened. It’s something I never discuss that I have nightmares about every single night,” Paris told her close pal.
“It was both [a terrible camp]. It was a wilderness camp and also just these schools where they just mentally and physically abuse the children and it’s still happening today. That’s why I wanted to talk about it, because I don’t think this… this should not happen to any child.” She said that the experience “definitely” traumatized her. “I think that’s why I’m so strong, because I’ve been through so much. People think it’s just all this glamour and fun and all that, but they don’t realize why I do what I do and why I wanted to become this.” This Is Paris debuts on her YouTube channel on September 14th.