Celebrity Paris Hilton testified before the House Ways and Means Committee this week about her experience with abuse at youth residential facilities.
Ms. Hilton, 43, was there to urge Congress to reauthorize Social Security Act Title IV-B, which lapsed in 2021. The provision offered funding to states and American Indian tribes to help prevent child neglect and abuse, support at-risk families, promote the well-being of children in foster and adoptive families, and provide development for the child welfare workforce.
Ms. Hilton, an heiress of the family that founded the Hilton hotel chain, was not put in foster care, but was put in a series of youth rehabilitation facilities over behavioral issues.
“When I was 16 years old, I was ripped from my bed in the middle of the night and transported across state lines to the first of four youth residential treatment facilities. These programs promised ‘healing, growth, and support,’ but instead did not allow me to speak, move freely, or even look out of a window for two years,” Ms. Hilton told the committee.
Ms. Hilton said that staff forcibly fed her medications, sexually abused her and stripped her naked, restrained and dragged her with violent force, and put her into solitary confinement.
Her parents, she said, were unaware of what was happening.
“My parents were completely deceived, lied to and manipulated by this for-profit industry … so can you only imagine the experience for youth who don’t have anyone checking in on them?” Ms. Hilton said.
Reauthorizing SSA Title IV-B is a bipartisan priority for the committee, said Rep. Jason Smith, Missouri Republican and the panel chairman.
“A bipartisan coalition of Republican and Democrat members on this committee have introduced 16 bills aimed at enhancing and strengthening IV-B and supporting community-based organizations … This reauthorization is crucial to strengthening child welfare and protecting America’s children,” Mr. Smith said in his opening remarks.
A review by the committee found a host of issues.
Almost one-third of all social workers leave the profession each year, bureaucracy impedes caseworkers from caring for children properly, families face slow court hearings without the support of lawyers, relatives who care for children lack proper support and American Indians face unjust barriers in trying to keep their families together, the Ways and Means Committee found.
Ms. Hilton also wants Congress to pass the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, introduced in April 2023 by Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat.
The law would establish “an interagency Federal Work Group on Youth Residential Programs to support and implement best practices regarding the health and safety, care, treatment, and appropriate placement of youth,” which would include a national database on the process and outcomes of rehabilitation for youth in these programs.
The Department of Health and Human Services inspector general found in a study released earlier this month that some states do not have the information needed to track abuse in child care facilities.
Collection and sharing of data on maltreatment is not mandatory under federal law.
The HHS OIG found that Alabama, Arizona, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota and Pennsylvania were incapable of identifying patterns of abuse at individual care facilities. Vermont did not provide a response.
Alabama, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont also were not able to identify these patterns across care facility chains within their states, the inspector general said.
More than half of states do not monitor whether operators of residential facilities in their state also operate in other states, the report also stated.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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