SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Paris Hilton joined California lawmakers on Monday to push for legislation to crack down on the industry that cares for troubled youth by calling for more transparency in youth treatment facilities.
The bill, sponsored by the Hilton hotel heir and media personality, would require information on how short-term residential facilities for youth that address substance abuse and behavioral problems use disciplinary measures against minors, such as restraints and seclusion. The purpose is to expose.
These centers would be required to notify parents and the state whenever they use restraint or isolation rooms for minors.
The authors are Republican state Sen. Shannon Grove and Democratic state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Angelique Ashby.
“I have first-hand knowledge of the horrors that occur behind closed doors in youth residential facilities,” Hilton said Monday at a news conference at the state Capitol. “In industrial facilities for troubled teens in California, Utah, and Montana, I was abused under the guise of therapy, isolated from the outside world, and denied even the most basic rights.”
She added: “I will continue to fight and shine a huge spotlight on these abuses until all children are safe.”
Hilton has become a prominent advocate for increased oversight and regulation of teen treatment centers after publicly sharing the physical and emotional abuse she suffered at a Utah boarding school as a teenager. .
She claimed that staff beat her, forced her to take unknown drugs, watched her shower, and sent her to solitary confinement without clothes as punishment.
In 2021, her testimony about her experience at Utah’s Provo Canyon School helped pass legislation imposing stricter oversight of youth treatment centers in the state.
Hilton also traveled to Washington, D.C., to advocate for federal reform and helped change laws to protect minors in at least eight states.
Earlier this month, she spoke out in support of boys being sent to private schools for troubled teens in Jamaica.
She is scheduled to testify at a Congressional hearing on the California bill later Monday.
The bill would require facilities to report details such as what disciplinary action was taken, the reason for it and who approved the plan.
The State Department, which regulates facilities, must also publish reports and update its database quarterly. We do not prohibit the use of such practices.
Between 2015 and 2020, a lack of locked youth treatment centers in California resulted in more than 1,240 children with behavioral issues being placed in out-of-state facilities, according to Sen. Grove’s office. It is said that it was sent.
As reports emerge of abuse occurring in these programs, including the death of a 16-year-old boy in a Michigan facility after being restrained for approximately 12 minutes, California has also committed to serious licensing violations at these facilities. We have discovered and decided to discontinue this program. 2020 program.
A law passed in 2021 formally banned the use of out-of-state residential centers. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom also authorized $8 million to repatriate all minors by last year.
Minors with behavioral problems are now being sent to short-term residential centers across the state, established in 2017, instead of group homes.
But under current law, these facilities are not required to share information about how often they use isolation rooms or restraints, or how many times those methods result in serious injury or death.
“We must demand the highest levels of transparency and accountability in the care of vulnerable people,” author Grove said on Monday. “This is a small but important measure.”
