Utah officials have officially revoked the license for the Springville campus of Provo Canyon School following years of public advocacy by Paris Hilton over allegations of teenage abuse.
The Utah Department of Health and Human Services issued an immediate shutdown order on July 6, citing a continuous pattern of noncompliance and health and safety violations.
The facility must cease all operations by August 6 and is prohibited from accepting new enrollments. State notices detail severe issues, including inadequate staffing and failures to protect clients from harm.
This emergency closure follows a series of legal and regulatory challenges for the school. Reports indicate officials recently imposed conditions on the provider’s separate Provo campus and enacted emergency sanctions over allegations that staff delayed critical medical treatment for a client.
Separate lawsuits allege the facility failed to protect a 13-year-old boy during an assault and left a teenage girl waiting nine days for medical care, which led to her developing a serious kidney condition.
Hilton, who attended the boarding school for 11 months as a teenager, celebrated the state’s action.
“For more than fifty years, children came forward with stories of abuse, neglect, and trauma,” she stated Tuesday. “Today, the state confirmed what survivors have known all along: Provo Canyon School failed the children in its care.”
Hilton shared that she was “one of those children” and described feeling “like I could cry for help and believe no one is coming.”
“Today, children still inside that facility know someone is finally coming to protect them,” she said. “The little girl in me who was told she would never be believed feels so validated today. We were telling the truth. We always were.”
On social media, Hilton thanked fellow advocates and emphasized that “no institution is too powerful to be held accountable,” adding that “when survivors refuse to stay silent, change is possible.”
Hilton first raised concerns about the school in her 2020 YouTube Originals documentary, “This Is Paris,” alongside four former classmates who made similar allegations.
She stated that her parents were barred from knowing about daily physical and verbal abuse due to her communications being closely monitored.
“It was supposed to be a school, but [classes] were not the focus at all,” Hilton said. “From the moment I woke up until I went to bed, it was all day screaming in my face, yelling at me, continuous torture.”
In an account from 2022, she described how staff subjected her to invasive late-night medical exams without a doctor present, which she characterized as sexual abuse.
Provo Canyon School previously stated that it could not comment on operations or experiences prior to its August 2000 sale to new ownership.
The school later issued a statement following the documentary, denying any use of “solitary confinement” as a form of intervention or “any drug or medication as a means of discipline,” adding, “We do not condone or promote any form of abuse.”
After her initial public statements, Hilton testified before the Utah Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and Criminal Justice Committee, stating she was “cut off from the outside world and stripped of all my human rights.”
Her sustained efforts contributed to the passage of the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act through the U.S. Senate in December 2024.
