“The entire UHS behavioral sector must be shut down. Decades of documented abuses, lawsuits, federal settlements, licensing revocations, and preventable harm to vulnerable children demand full accountability.” – CCHR International

Decades of Abuse Exposed: Paris Hilton’s campaign and CCHR’s 35 years of advocacy force Provo Canyon Shutdown, fueling calls to defund UHS’s behavioral empire

By CCHR International
The Mental Health Industry Watchdog
July 17, 2026

The Utah Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has revoked the license of Provo Canyon School’s Springville Campus, a residential behavioral treatment facility for juvenile girls owned by Universal Health Services (UHS) in Utah.[1] Regulators cited video evidence of a staff member striking a restrained client, along with repeated failures to protect girls from harm, violence, discrimination, and disrespectful treatment. The facility must cease all services by August 6, 2026.[2] 

Paris Hilton has acclaimed the decision as validation of her long-running campaign to close Provo Canyon School after exposing the abuse she endured there as a teenager. Hilton spent 11 months at the facility in 1999, where she said she was forced to take psychotropic drugs, placed in solitary confinement, and beaten—experiences with lasting long-term effects.[3] In September 2020, she released her compelling account of her experiences in the documentary, This is Paris. Later that month, she helped launch a petition along with Breaking Code Silence calling for the school’s closure. In October 2020, she organized a protest outside the facility. The petition has garnered over 211,200 signatures.[4] CCHR International has praised Hilton’s years of courageous advocacy and her work on legislative reforms to protect troubled youth from abuse in behavioral facilities.

CCHR supported Hilton’s efforts, which contributed to the federal Stop Institutional Child Abuse law in 2024[5] and an expanded Utah law in 2025 establishing a Child Protection Ombudsman with authority to investigate psychiatric abuse of children.[6] CCHR also helped secure a Maryland law in 2025 banning physical restraint during child transport to facilities and empowering the Attorney General to take action against violators.[7]

CCHR International has exposed Provo Canyon since the 1990s and maintains that UHS’s entire network of behavioral residential treatment facilities and “schools” should lose Medicare and Medicaid contracts and be shut down.

CCHR played a key role in investigating and exposing Charter Behavioral Health, which owned Provo Canyon at the time of Hilton’s treatment. Charter was alleged to have kidnapped and institutionalized patients for insurance payouts. CCHR collaborated with 60 Minutes II on the compelling 1999 special “Unsafe Haven,” which revealed staff altering vital signs and fabricating chart entries to justify insurance payments rather than document actual medical conditions.[8] A psychiatrist was filmed visiting late at night—after children were asleep—pausing only long enough to chart a visit.[9] Charter subsequently filed for bankruptcy in 2000 and reached a $7 million settlement with the Department of Justice over overcharging federal health care programs, including Medicare.[10] The company closed or sold about 35 facilities, including Provo Canyon, which was acquired by UHS.[11]

Since June 2015, CCHR International has filed more than 38,000 complaints about UHS’s behavioral sector with Members of Congress and state legislators, including in Utah. At the time, the U.S. Department of Justice and HHS Office of Inspector General investigated the company’s behavioral facilities for billing fraud across nine states.[12] That case settled for $122 million.[13]

UHS has claimed it did not own Provo Canyon during Hilton’s stay. Yet Hilton and CCHR have consistently argued that the pattern of abuses under Charter continued under UHS operations. Hilton posted: “They told me my abuse happened under different ownership and dismissed my story. They told me it was for my own good. They told me no one would believe me. Turns out they were wrong about all of it.”[14]

As CCHR documented, Provo Canyon’s own record includes multiple violations: students injured during restraints in 2015[15]; the 2019–2021 sexual abuse case involving employee Gabriel Michael Lima, who was convicted of sodomy of a 12-year-old and listed on the Utah Sex Offender Registry; and dozens of other documented incidents.[16] In October 2020, flanking the release of This is Paris, CCHR Int posted 32 cases of patient abuses at UHS psych hospitals on its website, including Provo Canyon.[17]

A landmark 2024 Senate Finance Committee report, “Warehouses of Neglect,” indicted major chains including UHS, Acadia Healthcare, and others for subjecting children to routine abuse, inappropriate restraints, unsafe conditions, and inadequate care. Committee Chair Senator Ron Wyden called for shutting off the “fire hose of federal funding.”[18]

The report highlighted Provo Canyon and UHS’s Copper Hills in Utah, citing disproportionately high rates of sex crime investigations, staff assaults on students (including hitting and hair-pulling in restraints), chemical and physical restraints, overmedication, and trauma inflicted on children sent from other states:

• Police were called to Provo and Copper Hills to investigate sex crimes at a rate that was over four times higher and 1.6 times higher than the average across facilities in Utah, respectively. Police were called 29 times over four years to Provo Canyon School and 21 times over five and a half years to Copper Hills. (p. 33)

• A Utah Department of Human Services Provo Canyon School– Springville Campus document detailed multiple staff conduct violations. In one incident, a “school teacher […] hit a student on her head.” In another, a staffer “pulled a student’s hair for leverage in a restraint.” (p. 51)

• 2021: The Salt Lake Tribune’s coverage of a 14-year-old Oregonian’s harrowing out-of-state placement at Provo Canyon School shed light on her experience of being chemically restrained 17 times in three months. (p. 70)

• A former patient told The Salt Lake Tribune that he “felt like a zombie” while at Provo because he was so overmedicated. (p. 73)

• A 14-year-old Oregonian girl placed there was physically restrained and chemically sedated over 30 times over four months. This prompted Oregon officials to fly to Utah to investigate and ultimately return the child to Oregon. (p. 88)

• Oregon State Senator Sara Gelser Blouin described a child upon her return from Provo in the following way: “And, what they sent back to us was a broken, injured, frightened child with more trauma than she went there with.” (p. 98)[19]

In 2025, CCHR International President Jan Eastgate submitted testimony supporting Utah Senate Bill 297 that Hilton was campaigning to strengthen oversight of the troubled-teen industry. Her testimony detailed ongoing abuses at Provo Canyon and other UHS facilities in Utah, including repeated restraints, high assault rates at Benchmark Behavioral Health, and Provo Canyon’s seventh licensing violation in two years.[20]

Despite these red flags, abuses persisted. In May 2026, Utah HHS took emergency action after staff failed to call 911 following an assault that left a client unconscious and bleeding; the one-hour delay in emergency care contributed to a jaw injury and brain bleed.[21] In June 2026, Montana suspended referrals to Provo Canyon amid allegations of sexual assaults and other violations.[22] UHS’s separate boys’ campus in Provo remains open but is also barred from new admissions due to health and safety issues.[23]

CCHR reiterates that the entire UHS behavioral sector must be shut down. Decades of documented abuses, lawsuits, federal settlements, licensing revocations, and preventable harm to vulnerable children demand full accountability. Taxpayers should no longer fund facilities that warehouse and traumatize youth. Only the closure of operations will ensure full protection from the psychiatric harm these facilities permeate.

[1] “DHHS revokes license of Provo Canyon School’s Springville campus amid lawsuit over misconduct, neglect,” ABC4 Utah, 6 July 2026, https://www.abc4.com/news/wasatch-front/provo-canyon-springville-campus-license-revoked/

[2] “Utah Moves to Close Teen Treatment Center Accused of Abusing Girls,” The New York Times, 7 July 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/us/utah-boarding-school-abuse-paris-hilton.html

[3] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/10/05/paris-hilton-speaks-out-about-behavior-modification-abuse-of-teens/; “Paris Hilton calls for closure of Provo Canyon School amid abuse allegations,” New York Post, 30 Sept. 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/09/30/paris-hilton-calls-for-closure-of-provo-canyon-school/; Angelique Brenes, “Utah Revokes License for School Where Paris Hilton Says She Was Abused: ‘The News I’ve Been Fighting and Praying For,’” People, 7 Jul. 2026, https://people.com/paris-hilton-says-she-feels-so-validated-after-utah-revokes-license-of-school-where-she-says-she-was-abused-12013945

[4] Paris’ Impact Work, https://parishilton.com/paris-impact-work/; Shut down the abusive Provo Canyon School Petition, https://www.change.org/p/provo-canyon-school-shut-down-the-abusive-provo-canyon-school

[5] https://www.cchrint.org/2024/12/27/paris-hilton-congress-praised-for-teen-behavioral-treatment-abuse-prevention-and-oversight/; Ashleigh Fields, “Biden signs 50 bills, including 1 backed by Paris Hilton, on Christmas Eve,” The Hill, 24 Dec. 2024, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5055674-biden-signs-50-bills-including-one-backed-by-paris-hilton-on-christmas-eve/

[6] https://www.cchrint.org/2025/07/03/deaths-spur-closures-but-troubled-teen-camps-must-be-banned/; Courtney Johns, “Lawmakers push for tougher oversight after several deaths in Utah teen treatment centers,” KSL, 19 Mar. 2025, https://www.ksl.com/article/news/politics/lawmakers-push-for-tougher-oversight-after-several-deaths-in-utah-teen-treatment-centers-2/51583626

[7] https://www.cchrint.org/2025/12/26/2025-a-turning-point-for-human-rights/; Residential Child Care Programs – Transportation Companies – Regulation (Preventing Abduction in Youth Transport Act), https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/legislation/details/hb0497?ys=2025RS  

[8] David Khon, “Unsafe Haven,” CBS News, 15 Apr. 1999, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unsafe-haven/; https://vimeo.com/73649201

[9] “CBS Exposé Blurs Treatment, Privacy and Ethics Issues Network Risks Criminal, Civil Charges To Air Story,” Psychiatric Times, 1 June 1999, https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/cbs-expos-blurs-treatment-privacy-and-ethics-issues-network-risks-criminal-civil-charges-air-story

[10] David Khon, “Unsafe Haven,” CBS News, 15 Apr. 1999, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unsafe-haven/; Nation’s Former Largest Privately-Owned Psychiatric Chain Reaches Bankruptcy Settlement with United States, DOJ Archives, 18 Aug. 2000, https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2000/August/487civ.htm

[11] https://californiahealthline.org/morning-breakout/behavioral-health-charter-files-for-bankruptcy/

[12] https://www.cchrint.org/2017/06/05/uhs-under-investigation/; “UHS posts strong quarter even as it faces federal probe,” Phily.com, 30 Apr. 2015, http://articles.philly.com/2015-04-30/business/61657494_1_steve-filton-uhs-strong-quarter; UHS Inc, SEC Filing, For 8K, 31 Mar. 2015, Item 7:01, Regulation FD Disclosure, http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/352915/000119312515113094/d898400d8k.htm

[13] https://www.cchrint.org/2025/02/28/new-un-report-exposes-psychiatric-abuses-end-forced-treatment/; “D.C. psych hospital committed patients to boost profits, lawsuit says,” Washington Post, 24 Feb. 2025
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/02/24/psychiatric-institute-washington-lawsuit-medical-neglect/

[14] https://x.com/ParisHilton/status/2074395867402911800

[15] Jessica Miller, “Part 2: Provo Canyon School’s history of abuse accusations spans decades, far beyond Paris Hilton,” The Center for Health Journalism at the USC Annenberg School For Communication and Journalism, https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/our-work/reporting/part-2-provo-canyon-schools-history-abuse-accusations-spans-decades-far-beyond

[16] “Utah mental health facility employee facing felony charges after alleged abuse of former child patient,” Gephardt Daily, 6 Feb. 2020, https://gephardtdaily.com/local/mental-health-facility-employee-facing-felony-charges-after-alleged-abuse-of-former-child-patient/; Registered sex offenders, zip code 84780, https://www.city-data.com/soz/soz-84780.html

[17] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/10/30/child-abuse-allegations-in-the-behavioral-psychiatric-industry-universal-health-services-uhs/; Jessica Miller, “Provo Canyon School’s history of abuse accusations spans decades, far beyond Paris Hilton,” The Salt Lake Tribune, 20 Sept. 2020, updated 12 Oct. 2020, https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/09/20/provo-canyon-schools/

[18] https://www.cchrint.org/2024/06/21/senate-warehouses-of-neglect-report/; Michael Fitzgerald and Sara Tiano, “Senate Investigation Slams Residential Treatment Centers for Children as ‘Warehouses of Neglect,’” The Imprint, 12 June 2024, https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/senate-investigation-slams-residential-treatment-centers-for-children-as-warehouses-of-neglect/250056

[19] U.S.  Senate Finance Committee, “Warehouses of Neglect: How Taxpayers Are Funding Systemic Abuse in Youth Residential Treatment Facilities,” pages 33-98, https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/rtf_report_warehouses_of_neglect.pdf

[20] https://www.cchrint.org/2025/02/28/new-un-report-exposes-psychiatric-abuses-end-forced-treatment/

[21] Jeremy Tombs, “Action taken after Provo school staff failed to call 911 after client left unconscious,” Fox 13 News, 29 May 2026, https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/provo/action-taken-after-provo-school-staff-failed-to-call-911-after-client-left-unconscious

[22] https://www.cchrint.org/2026/06/26/sexually-abused-in-a-psychiatric-hospital-or-psychiatrists-or-psychologists-office/; Seaborn Larson, “Montana suspends referrals to Utah ‘troubled teen’ program after Belgrade boy suffers TBI,” The Billings Gazette, 18 June 2026, https://billingsgazette.com/news/state-regional/article_21f252dc-3789-5555-99c8-51ed3fa5399c.html

[23] Michael Levenson, “Utah Moves to Close Teen Treatment Center Accused of Abusing Girls,” The New York Times, 7 July 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/us/utah-boarding-school-abuse-paris-hilton.html