Provo Canyon School (PCS) is a psychiatric youth involuntary
residential treatment center
A residential treatment center (RTC), sometimes called a rehab, is a live-in health care facility providing therapy for substance use disorders, mental illness, or other behavioral problems. Residential treatment may be considered the "last-ditch ...
, owned and operated by
Universal Health Services
Universal Health Services, Inc. (UHS) is an American Fortune 500 company that provides hospital and healthcare services, based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. In 2021, its annual revenues were $12.6 billion.
Company history
Alan B. Miller, ...
(UHS) since 2000. The involuntary residential program claims to use an "Acuity Based Care" (ABC) model that identifies and re-assesses the strengths and needs of its students. Residents instead receive a wide range of interventions including psychotropic drug therapy; use of physical restraints; humiliation; starvation; and solitary confinement.
For nearly its entire history, the facility has faced accusations of abuse due to its abusive practices. These accusations gained renewed attention in 2020 when media personality
Paris Hilton
Paris Whitney Hilton (born February 17, 1981) is an American media personality, businesswoman, socialite, model, and entertainer. Born in New York City, and raised there and in Beverly Hills, California, she is a great-granddaughter of Conrad ...
released a documentary detailing the abuse she and other former residents claimed to have faced at the facility.
Charter Behavioral Health Systems owned and operated PCS until it sold to UHS in 2000.
Education
PCS claims to offer year round academics to all of its residents. The school claims to offer a variety of educational programs to the students including career counseling, competitive sports, special education and more. PCS is fully accredited by the
Northwest Accreditation Commission
The Northwest Accreditation Commission (NWAC), formerly named the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools, is a non-governmental organization that provides accreditation to educational institutions in the Northwestern United States. The Co ...
.
Abuse
Since its inception, the school has been subject to a large number of individual and class-action lawsuits, particularly throughout the 1980s and 1990s. These lawsuits ranged from verbal, physical, and sexual abuse and medical negligence, to violating students'
First Amendment
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...
rights and invasion of privacy, to false imprisonment and battery, to intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy, and loss of parental consortium.
In September 2020, media personality and socialite
Paris Hilton
Paris Whitney Hilton (born February 17, 1981) is an American media personality, businesswoman, socialite, model, and entertainer. Born in New York City, and raised there and in Beverly Hills, California, she is a great-granddaughter of Conrad ...
premiered her
YouTube Originals
YouTube Premium, formerly known as YouTube Red, is a subscription service that provides advertising-free streaming of all videos hosted by YouTube, offline play and background playback of videos on mobile devices, access to advertising-free mus ...
documentary ''
This Is Paris
''This Is Paris'' is a 2020 documentary film produced by YouTube Originals about media personality Paris Hilton, including her experiences as a former victim of the troubled teen industry.
Plot
''This is Paris'' is about Hilton's day-to-day expe ...
'', in which she attributes her chronic insomnia to PTSD developed as a result of being sent to four different
"troubled teen" industry programs:
CEDU School in
Running Springs, California
Running Springs is a census-designated place (CDP) in San Bernardino County, California, United States. The population was 5,268 at the 2020 census, up from 4,862 at the 2010 census. Running Springs is situated 17 miles west of the city of Big Bea ...
, Ascent Wilderness Program in
Ruby Ridge, Idaho, Cascade School in
Whitmore, California
Whitmore is an unincorporated community in Shasta County, California. Its population is 311 as of the 2020 census. Its zip code is 96096, and wired telephone numbers follow the pattern 530-472-xxxx, which is shared by the neighboring communities o ...
, and Provo Canyon School. After running from the first three, she spent 11 months at PCS in the late 1990s. Hilton reported that she and other students were physically and psychologically abused. Some of the instances she details include how she and the other students were allegedly drugged with unknown medications, how she was allegedly restrained and forcibly transported to the school and how she was strip searched and placed in a
seclusion room for nearly twenty-four hours. She claims PCS as "the worst of the worst" of all troubled youth facilities.
In October 2020, tattoo artist and television personality
Kat Von D alleged her parents sent her to the school for a three-week program, but she was ultimately there for six months. She claimed to witness students being force-fed medications, sedated, and isolated. Von D said that she left with "major PTSD and other traumas due to the unregulated, unethical and abusive protocols of this 'school'" and wrote that she couldn't "call them schools because they're not schools they're fucking lockdown facilities". Von D said that she was "spared of the sexual abuse and the physical abuse" but "definitely saw" it happen.
On October 9, 2020, Hilton and a group of friends who attended PCS with her led a silent protest with hundreds of other protesters through the streets and neighborhoods of
Provo, Utah to bring awareness to the facility.
References
External links
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{{authority control
Private high schools in Utah
Provo, Utah
Springville, Utah
Behavior modification
Residential treatment centers
Medical controversies in the United States
Human rights abuses in the United States