We thought we knew Paris Hilton. We were wrong. This is the untold true story that shaped the woman, and the iconic character she created.

Reported by Yahoo

Paris Hilton’s sister Nicky Hilton “interrogated” the director of her documentary, because she worried Paris would be painted in a bad light.

The 39-year-old socialite and businesswoman is the subject of a YouTube documentary titled ‘This Is Paris’ – which airs on the site on Monday (14.09.20) – and the film’s director, Alexandra Dean, has explained that Paris’ younger sister Nicky, 36, was sceptical at first, as she wanted to make sure the project would “tell the whole story” of Paris’ life.

Alexandra said: “Nicky definitely interrogated me in an early phone call. Once she was satisfied that I wanted to do something serious, and tell the whole story, she was on board with that and she felt like she’d never heard somebody say that before.

The filmmaker also had trouble getting Paris’ mother, Kathy Hilton, involved.

She added: “For Kathy, I think it was a much more difficult decision. I have to give her a lot of credit because she was extremely brave to do this. Any mother who went through that kind of trauma with their kid is brave to revisit it. It definitely took a while talking to her before she would do it.”

In the documentary, Paris opens up about the alleged abuse she suffered whilst attending Provo Canyon School as a teenager, and Alexandra says she connected with the ‘Simple Life’ alum because her sister had endured similar trauma.

She explained: “I knew she’d been to these schools. I didn’t know any more than that, and I didn’t know how it had affected her. I’d just done my homework.

“I have a sister who reminds me a lot of Paris. She herself went through a really traumatic period in our childhood, and I saw it happen. So, something about Paris was very familiar to me and I expected, immediately when I met her, that there was something there that was similar to what had happened to my sister.”

Alexandra hopes the documentary will encourage people to “reflect” on “how quickly we judge women like Paris”, and also hopes the film can help bring an end to abuse in schools.

Speaking to Us Weekly magazine, she said: “There are two things that I want people to take from the film. I’d like them to reflect a little on how quickly we judge women like Paris Hilton – who are clearly playing a character in the public eye. We like to, kind of, tear them down. We like to judge them so quickly and think we’re superior for knowing who they are. We don’t know who they are.

“The other thing that I want to happen – and this is bigger than the first is – I really would like these schools that are abusing children to stop. My hope is that this helps do that.”

ET’s Kevin Frazier talked to the 39-year-old heiress and entrepreneur about her new documentary, ‘This is Paris,’ which premieres Sept. 14 on YouTube. Paris gets emotional while watching her first Entertainment Tonight interview from 2001 and reveals what she’s learned since then.. In her new documentary, she reveals trauma she says she endured at a Utah boarding school in her teens, and tells ET about the tough decision to open up about it for the first time. Paris also discusses being ready to settle down and have kids, and opens up about her relationship with businessman Carter Reum, whom she’s been dating since November 2019.

Paris Hilton’s parents will soon get look at their daughter’s revealing new documentary – including her candid revelations about the abuse she endured during her time at boarding school. When Access Daily’s Kit Hoover asked her about her parents’ reaction to her sharing her story, she said, “They haven’t seen it yet. We’re going to watch it together, but it’s going to be really hard, because they had no idea what they were doing to me in there, because they were being manipulated by the people that worked there. So it’s going to be very hard to watch that, for sure.” Paris also discussed, her relationship with Carter Reum and her thoughts on friend Kim Kardashian’s long-running reality show, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” coming to an end. “This Is Paris” premieres on Paris’ YouTube channel on September 14.

Reported by Yahoo!

Paris Hilton is opening up about the abuse she endured in five of her romantic relationships. The heiress and businesswoman spoke to People about her journey ahead of the September 14 premiere of her YouTube documentary This Is Paris. Hilton’s candid remarks come shortly after Hilton spoke about being abused as a teenager at Provo Canyon School in Utah, a boarding school she attended in the late 1990s.

“From the moment I woke up until I went to bed, it was all day screaming in my face, yelling at me, continuous torture,” Hilton said. “The staff would say terrible things. They were constantly making me feel bad about myself and bully me. I think it was their goal to break us down. And they were physically abusive, hitting and strangling us. They wanted to instill fear in the kids so we’d be too scared to disobey them.”

Hilton said her experience at the school led her to accepting behavior in her past romantic relationships that was also abusive.

“I went through multiple abusive relationships,” Hilton told People in its interview released today. “I was strangled, I was hit, I was grabbed aggressively. I put up with things no one should.”

“I had become so used to [abusive behavior] at Provo, that it made me feel like it was normal,” Hilton continued. She said the relationships with her abusive exes started the same: “They all seemed like such nice guys and then the true colors would show. They’d get jealous, or defensive or try to control me. And there there would come a point where they would become physically, verbally and emotionally abusive.”

“I didn’t really understand what love or relationships were,” she added. “I thought that them getting so crazy meant that they were in love with me. Looking back, I can’t believe I let people treat me like that.”

Hilton is now dating 39-year-old entrepreneur Carter Reum, her boyfriend of nine months, and it’s a healthy relationship. “I feel so safe with him,” she said. “Before, I don’t think I was really ready for a good relationship. But I’ve learned so much. And I’m so grateful to have found my perfect match.”

Reported by People magazine

Paris Hilton is opening up about a painful secret she’s kept private for over two decades.

In her new documentary, This Is Paris, premiering Sept. 14 on Hilton’s YouTube channel, the entrepreneur and reality star reveals for the first time the horrific abuse she says she endured as a teen while at a boarding school in Utah.

“I buried my truth for so long,” Hilton, 39, tells PEOPLE exclusively of the mental, emotional and physical pain she says she underwent while at Provo Canyon School in the late ’90s. “But I’m proud of the strong woman I’ve become. People might assume everything in my life came easy to me, but I want to show the world who I truly am.”

Years before she became a household name on The Simple Life in 2003, Hilton was a teen living in New York City’s famed Waldorf Astoria Hotel with her parents, Rick and Kathy Hilton, and younger siblings: Nicky, 36, Barron, 30, and Conrad, 26.

And along with the privileges of her big city life came big temptations.

“It was so easy to sneak out and go to clubs and parties,” recalls Hilton. “My parents were so strict that it made me want to rebel. They’d [punish me] by taking away my cell phone, taking away my credit card, but it didn’t work. I would still go out on my own.”

Eventually, says Hilton, Rick and Kathy were fed up and made the decision to send their then 17-year-old daughter to a series of boarding schools that claimed to focus on behavioral and mental development, the last of which was Provo Canyon School, where Hilton would stay for 11 months.

Almost immediately after she arrived, “I knew it was going to be worse than anywhere else,” says Hilton. The abuse she faced, she says, took place on a daily basis.

“It was supposed to be a school, but [classes] were not the focus at all,” says Hilton. “From the moment I woke up until I went to bed, it was all day screaming in my face, yelling at me, continuous torture.”

(When reached by PEOPLE for comment on the allegations, the school responded: “Originally opened in 1971, Provo Canyon School was sold by its previous ownership in August 2000. We therefore cannot comment on the operations or patient experience prior to this time.”)

Continues Hilton: “The staff would say terrible things. They were constantly making me feel bad about myself and bully me. I think it was their goal to break us down. And they were physically abusive, hitting and strangling us. They wanted to instill fear in the kids so we’d be too scared to disobey them.”

Three of Hilton’s former teen classmates also appear in the documentary, making similar allegations about Provo Canyon School, including that they were often force-fed medication and held down by restraints as punishment.

When one of her classmates told staff that Hilton had plans to run away (“you couldn’t trust anyone there,” she says), she says she was placed in solitary confinement. “They would use that as punishment, sometimes 20 hours a day.”

The fear of continued abuse began to take its toll on the once vibrant teen.

“I was having panic attacks and crying every single day,” says Hilton. “I was just so miserable. I felt like a prisoner and I hated life.”

Attempts to tell her parents about the conditions at school were fruitless. “I didn’t really get to speak to my family,” says Hilton, “maybe once every two or three months. We were cut off from the outside world. And when I tried to tell them once, I got in so much trouble I was scared to say it again. They would grab the phone or rip up letters I wrote telling me, ‘No one is going to believe you.’ And the staff would tell the parents that the kids were lying. So my parents had no idea what was going on.”

Finally, when she turned 18 in 1999, Hilton left the school and headed back to New York, but was terrified to speak a word of her experience — to anyone.

“I was so grateful to be out of there, I didn’t even want to bring it up again,” says Hilton. “It was just something I was ashamed of and I didn’t want to speak of it.”

But more than 20 years later, in filming the documentary and reflecting on her life thus far, Hilton says she was finally able to open up about the trauma of her past — in the hopes that she can finally move on.

“It feels like my nightmare is over,” she says. “And I’m going to watch the movie with my parents — I think it will be good for us, but emotional too. There are no more secrets.”

Hilton says she doesn’t have any plans currently to pursue legal justice; instead, she’s focused on raising awareness about other so-called behavior improvement schools that she says still employ as a practice the kind of physical and verbal abuse she endured for so long.

“I want these places shut down,” says Hilton. “I want them to be held accountable. And I want to be a voice for children and now adults everywhere who have had similar experiences. I want it to stop for good and I will do whatever I can to make it happen.”

This Is Paris premieres Sept. 14 on Hilton’s YouTube channel.

Look for more from Hilton in an upcoming issue of PEOPLE.