Paris Hilton calls on Congress to take action against ‘criminal’ nursing homes

Hotel heiress Paris Hilton testified on Capitol Hill on Wednesday about the “criminal” treatment she and other children endured in foster homes. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had previously concluded in a report that states are failing to prosecute the abuses.

“I am here to be the voice of the children whose voices cannot be heard,” Hilton told members of the House Budget Committee. “The treatment these children have had to endure is criminal.”

Nearly 50,000 children live in foster homes, but more than a dozen states fail to record when multiple abuses occur in the same facility, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general.

“Many states did not have the information they needed to identify patterns of abuse in residential institutions,” the document said.

At least 32 states told the Office of the Inspector General that they do not track abuses at facilities operating outside their borders, even when they operate under contracts with companies with which they also do business.

The report follows an investigation by the US Senate Finance Committee in June that found child abuse in foster homes run by a handful of large, for-profit companies and funded with US money.

“When I was 16 years old, I was ripped from my bed in the middle of the night and taken across state lines to the first of four residential treatment facilities for juveniles,” Hilton said in her opening statement.

“These programs promised healing, growth and support – but instead they didn’t allow me to speak, move freely or even look out the window for two years,” she continued.

“Staff forcibly administered medication and sexually abused me. I was forcibly restrained and dragged through the hallways, stripped naked and placed in solitary confinement,” Hilton added.

“My parents were completely deceived, lied to and manipulated by this profit-driven industry about the inhumane treatment I received,” she said. “So can you imagine what happens to youth who are placed in state care and are not regularly monitored by someone?”

Taxpayers spend billions of dollars caring for thousands of children across the country. Some are placed with families in institutions or with relatives.

The most expensive form of treatment, which has recently come under the scrutiny of federal authorities, involves inpatient treatment facilities that cost several hundred dollars or more per day.

The facilities often deal with children with medical or behavioral needs.

In 2020, for example, 16-year-old Cornelius Fredericks died at a Michigan center after staff physically restrained him for 12 minutes as punishment for throwing food. Michigan overhauled its care system and banned facilities from restraining children like Fredericks facedown.

That same year, a report by the Philadelphia Inquirer revealed that more than 40 children had been abused in facilities across Pennsylvania.

The HHS inspector general recommended that the agency help states track down facility abuses and ownership information and create a place for states to share information about problems that arise.

“We found that many states lack important information that could support increased oversight of residential children’s facilities,” the report said.

The HHS said it agreed with the recommendation but would not require states to collect such information.

Hilton, who has lobbied state and federal lawmakers in recent years for reform of foster care and other juvenile treatment facilities, told lawmakers she had shared rooms “with foster and adopted children” who made heartbreaking statements about how they “feel like they’ve been forgotten.”

“I will not stop until America’s youth are safe,” she vowed to members of the Budget Committee.