In a dark auditorium at the Arizona Biltmore Luxury Resort in Phoenix, Paris Hilton is holding a microphone bedazzled with rhinestones and speaking to a spellbound audience at a behavioral health conference. She wears a white lace dress and her face is cast half in light and half in shadow. In a low, steady voice she describes the abuse she faced at four different residential programs for troubled teens. Every seat is filled, and people are standing packed three deep against the walls, yet everyone is still. Next to me, a man sobs.

Hilton is not typical fodder for a behavioral health conference, but her story is part of the broader theme of the event. As a teenager, Hilton had undiagnosed ADHD. By day, school felt like a cage. She lived for the nights where she snuck out and could dance her way through New York's glittering clubs and lose herself to the throbbing music. Desperate, her parents sent her away to boarding schools that promised to reform her.

"Reform," she asserts, was a euphemism for torture. The list of abuses is long, but for Hilton include being subject to strip and cavity searches, made to shower in front of male teachers, force-fed medications, physically restrained, beaten, and thrown into solitary confinement. She was not allowed to make contact with outsiders. "They took everything from me," Hilton tells the audience. "They took my things, my voice, and my name. I was no longer Paris. I was number 127."

Every year an estimated 200,000 young people are sent to some type of correctional institution, which receive $23 billion in public funding according to the American Bar Association (ABA). The ABA estimates one such school, Sequel, has an annual revenue of over $200 million and receives up to $800 a day per child. Many of these institutions have been accused of abuse, but are largely unregulated and continue to receive public funding.