Paris Hilton has said she was “verbally, mentally and physically abused on a daily basis” while at boarding school.
The US socialite and TV star discussed her treatment at the school in Utah in the 1990s during a committee hearing with lawmakers considering introducing new regulations in education.
Speaking on Monday, she said she urged them to ensure other children do not suffer the same abuse.
Hilton said she was “cut off from the outside world and stripped of all of my human rights”.
“Every time I would use the bathroom or take a shower it was monitored,” she added.
“At 16 years old, as a child, I felt their piercing eyes staring at my naked body,
“I was just a kid and felt violated every single day.”
Children were “restrained, hit, thrown into walls, strangled and sexually abused regularly” at the school, she said.
Hilton said she was unable to report the abuse as communications with her family and the outside world were tightly monitored.
“Talking about something so personal was and is still terrifying, but I can’t go to sleep at night knowing there are children enduring the same abuse that I and so many others went through, and neither should you,” she said.