Paris Hilton Revisits Sex Tape Leak In Capitol Hill Speech: 'It Was Abuse'

Paris Hilton on Thursday returned to Capitol Hill and revisited the painful “abuse” of having her private sex tape leaked when she was just 19, advocating in a speech alongside Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) for relevant bipartisan legislation.

The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (or DEFIANCE) Act was passed last week in the Senate and aims to allow victims of involuntary, sexually explicit deepfake imagery to take legal action against those who create, distribute and solicit it.

“Coming back to the Capitol, I feel something new,” Hilton said Thursday. “Strength.”

“When I was 19 years old, a private, intimate video of me was shared with the world without my consent. People called it a scandal. It wasn’t. It was abuse,” she said. “There were no laws at the time to protect me. There weren’t even words for what had been done to me.”

The Hilton Hotels heiress noted that the internet “was still new” when people sold her “pain for clicks” in 2004. She recalled many people telling her to “be grateful for the attention” at the time and not seeing her as an exploited young woman — but as “a punchline,” instead.

Hilton wrote in her 2023 book “Paris: The Memoir” that her much older then-boyfriend Rick Salomon “kept pushing” to privately record them, according to an excerpt published in the Los Angeles Times. When footage leaked, Hilton publicly said she didn’t approve of its release.

Salomon then sued Hilton for defamation, only for Hilton to successfully countersue for damages. Hilton reportedly said that she never received a profit from the video and that she donated her $400,000 settlement to charity.

“No one asked me what I lost,” she said Thursday. “I lost control over my body, over my reputation. My sense of safety and self-worth was stolen from me. And I fought hard to get those things back, and I believed that the worst was behind me, but it wasn’t.”

Hilton continued, “Because today, what happened to me then is happening now to millions of women and girls in a new and more terrifying way. Before, somebody had to betray your trust and steal something real. Now all it takes is a computer and a stranger’s imagination.”

She went on to call this rise of artificial intelligence-generated pornography an “epidemic.”

Hilton said that there are more than 100,000 sexually explicit deepfakes of her online, none of which are “real” or were created with her consent, and that “no amount of money or lawyers” suffices anymore to protect victims such as herself from this new phenomenon.

Hilton also noted just how “lucky” she was to be able to “reclaim” her story, explaining that she’s fighting for legislative action because so many other women and girls don’t have a platform like hers. Hilton’s husband, Carter Reum, was present on Thursday for moral support.

“Telling the truth has helped me heal, and I am so proud that today I stand here without shame,” Hilton said Thursday. “I will keep telling the truth to protect every woman, every girl, every survivor, now and for the future.”