Jessica Miller

This is The Salt Lake Tribune’s first attempt at crowdfunding. We are trying to raise $10,000. With that money, we’ll get records on treatment centers, and we’ll build a database to make them available to all for free.

“Today, I’m not here as Paris Hilton,” the 39-year-old celebrity told the crowd. “I’m here as just another survivor who was abused, who has lived with that since the day I left. And I am dedicated to shutting down Provo Canyon School, which will cause a chain reaction among this entire industry.”

Celebrity Paris Hilton says she is now on a mission to reform the troubled teen industry. Her first target: Provo Canyon School, the Utah facility she attended in the 1990s where she says she was physically and emotionally abused.

A pattern of controversy and allegations of abuse stretches from the 1980s to today at one of Utah’s largest youth residential treatment centers.

In Utah, a lucrative for-profit industry thrives with minimal regulation from state officials.

Paris Hilton is speaking out publicly about what she says was abuse she endured while at a “troubled teen” facility in Utah in the 1990s.