Paris Hilton discussed the 2004 release of a sex tape that featured her during an appearance on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Hilton, accompanied by Democratic New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Republican Florida representative Laurel Lee, the reality star gave an impassioned speech about the importance of protecting women from similar incidents.
“When I was 19 years old, a private, intimate video of me was shared with the world without my consent,” Hilton said. “People called it a scandal. It wasn’t. It was abuse.”
Hilton made the appearance in support of the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act, or DEFIANCE Act. The bipartisan legislation would allow victims of AI-generated, sexually explicit content to take legal action against people who create it, distribute it, and solicit it with the intent to distribute. The bill has already pass in the Senate.
“There were no laws at the time to protect me,” Hilton explained. “There weren’t even words for what had been done to me. The Internet was still new, and so was the cruelty that came with it.”
She continued, “They called me names. They laughed and made me the punchline. They sold my pain for clicks, and then they told me to be quiet, to move on, to even be grateful for the attention. These people didn’t see me as a young woman who had been exploited. They didn’t see the panic that I felt, the humiliation, or the shame. No one asked me what I lost.”
Hilton explained that she had the platform to reclaim her story, but “so many others don’t.” “And what I’ve learned is that when your image is violated, it doesn’t disappear; it lives inside you, but so does your power,” she said. “Telling the truth has helped me heal, and I am so proud that today I stand here without shame.”
She concluded, “I will keep telling the truth to protect every woman, every girl, every survivor, now and for the future.”
The sex tape was filmed by Hilton’s then-boyfriend Rick Salomon. She recounted the experience in her 2024 book, Paris: The Memoir, writing that she felt pressured to allow her much older boyfriend to record her. The footage was released in 2004. After Hilton said publicly that she did not approve of its release, Salomon sued Hilton for defamation. She counter-sued and was awarded damages, which she donated to charity.
In 2021, Hilton described the sex tape to Vanity Fair as “something that will hurt me for the rest of my life.” “It was a private experience between two people,” Hilton said. “You love someone, you trust someone and to have your trust betrayed like that and for the whole world to be watching and laughing… It was even more hurtful to me to have these people think that I did this on purpose — that killed me. It still gives me post-traumatic stress disorder to talk about it.”
Hilton will release a new documentary, Infinite Icon: A Visual Memoir, on Jan. 30. The film will center around the creation of Hilton’s 2024 album of the same name, and explore how music often served as a balm during the most difficult moments of her life and career. In the film, Hilton will confront the often deeply misogynistic ways she was portrayed in the media, and discuss her experiences at troubled teen schools, where she claimed she was abused.
