Utah revokes license for boarding school where Paris Hilton says she was abused as a teen

Utah has revoked the license of a boarding school where Paris Hilton said she was abused as a teenager, saying the school has “failed to provide applicable health and safety services for clients.”

The state’s action, which took effect Monday, cites multiple noncompliance issues against the Provo Canyon School’s campus in Springville. The school has 15 days to request a hearing before the Department of Health & Human Services.

The wide-ranging citations, which go back to 2025, include failing to increase staff-to-client ratios, engaging in an unnecessary restraint and aggressive physical contact with a client, neglecting care, and not verifying employee information or submitting background checks for applicants in a timely manner. State health officials imposed temporary restrictions on the school in May, saying staff did not seek immediate medical care for a student with serious injuries.

“For more than fifty years, children came forward with stories of abuse, neglect, and trauma,” Hilton said in a statement provided Tuesday. “Today, the state confirmed what survivors have known all along: Provo Canyon School failed the children in its care.

“I was one of those children. I know what it feels like to cry for help and believe no one is coming. Today, children still inside that facility know someone is finally coming to protect them.”

Hilton, the hotel heiress and media personality, spent almost a year at the school in the late 1990s. She alleges that staff members beat her, watched her shower, fed her unknown pills and locked her in solitary confinement without clothing.

Shannon Thoman-Black, director of the division of licensing and background checks at the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, said Tuesday during a media briefing that the facility must close by Aug. 6. She also said the owners “may not reapply for a new license for five years” and the department continues to “conduct weekly inspections and monitor for rule compliance.”

“It is actually incredibly unsafe if we were to go in and just stick a sign on the door and say, ‘Everybody out,’” Thoman-Black added. “We have the responsibility to make sure these kids get discharged into safe places.”

Hilton, 45, called on Utah licensors to shut down the school. She has testified about her experiences there in Congress and state legislatures around the U.S., helping pass laws to protect teens in Utah and 15 other states. Utah has long played an outsized role in the troubled teen industry, a network of private, for-profit residential centers for children with behavioral issues.

Provo Canyon School, described on its website as a psychiatric residential treatment facility for youth ages 12 to 18, did not immediately respond to an Associated Press email seeking comment. The state said in its letter that all services at the campus must be terminated by Aug. 6.

In June, Hilton returned to the school to speak in support of two families who filed lawsuits alleging their children were mistreated there.

The school is under new ownership. The administration has said it can’t comment on anything that came before the change, including Hilton’s time there.