'I Remember Crying While They Held Me Down', Paris Hilton Speaks Out Against Institutional Child Abuse

In addition to speaking with reporters, the hotel heiress wrote about her experiences with assault. She outlined the unethical methods she was subjected to at Provo Canyon School, where her parents brought her when she was 16 to try to fix her attention deficit issue, in an op-ed for USA Today.

"On my first day, I was forced to remove all my clothes, squat and cough, and submit to a gynecological exam - all watched closely by male staff," Hilton recalled, adding that these examinations "would be done to me frequently during my time at Provo, and only in the middle of the night."

Hilton went on to tell how she would cry and resist while being held down for the invasive inspections later in the article. They threatened to send her to solitary confinement, or "Obs," if she fought back too violently.

"Obs – short for observation – was solitary confinement in a tiny cinderblock room with nothing but a drain and a roll of toilet paper. The room was cold, and I was almost naked," she wrote.

"Looking back on these experiences as an adult woman, I can recognize these exams for what they were: the sexual assault of children," Hilton continued, adding: "Anyone can recognize this isn’t treatment; it’s torture."

The actress said, "My experiences at Provo left me with psychological scars that I'm currently struggling to heal." "I'm still processing the trauma," she added, "doing the hard work required to convey the entire story in a memoir that will be published next year."

She said, however, that the trauma of speaking up is worth it if it means that future children would not be subjected to the abuse she endured.

"It takes all my courage to talk about it, but I couldn’t stand knowing that children as young as 8 years old are being sent to these 'troubled teen' programs by parents who don’t know and government agencies that don’t care," Hilton wrote.

The star pushed lawmakers to pass the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act in a picture on Instagram from the Capitol Hill demonstration, writing: "It is my goal that legislators on both sides will hear our voice & take action!"

According to MailOnline, the proposal would prevent public funds such as Medicaid, Title IV-E, and special education funding from going to correctional institutions, putting an end to the billion-dollar sector.