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Paris Hilton says she had nothing to do with the release of her infamous sex tape with ex

Paris Hilton reflects on her infamous sex tape in her new memoir and shares reasons why she wasn’t behind the leak.

Paris Hilton says Rick Solomon pressured her into doing a sex tape when she was 19. Picture: YouTube/Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton says Rick Solomon pressured her into doing a sex tape when she was 19. Picture: YouTube/Paris Hilton

Paris Hilton swears she had nothing to do with the release of her infamous sex tape.

In her just-released Paris: The Memoir, the former "It" girl explains why people who know her know she never had a hand in it.

“The lighting would have been better,” she writes, as per New York Post. “I would have had proper hair, makeup, and wardrobe. The camera angles and editing would have been more flattering.”

And Hilton astutely notes that she “would not have had the poor taste to dedicate a porn flick to the victims” of 9/11. (Seriously. What the actual f**k does that even mean?)’”

The Simple Life alum made the tape with then-boyfriend Rick Salomon in 2001 when she was just 19 and he was 31.

Paris Hilton says Rick Solomon pressured her into doing a sex tape when she was 19. Picture: YouTube/Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton says Rick Solomon pressured her into doing a sex tape when she was 19. Picture: YouTube/Paris Hilton

She never refers to Salomon – a former professional poker player who also married Pamela Anderson twice – by name, instead describing him as “coarse, arrogant” and the “perfect guy for a girl going through the most self-destructive moment of her life”.

Hilton, now 42, reveals that she doesn’t remember much from the night in question, which happened after they had partied, only that Salomon “had often said it was something he did with other women … he kept pushing. I kept making excuses.”

Salomon told her that “it was just for us, no one else would ever see it. And then he told me if I wouldn’t do it, he could easily find someone who would, and that was the worst thing I could think of – to be dumped by this grown man because I was a stupid kid who didn’t know how to play grown-up games.”

The Confessions of an Heiress author also admits that she wanted “to be alive in a sensual way”.

Paris Hilton opens up about her past in her new tell-all <i>Paris: The Memoir</i>. Picture: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images/AFP.
Paris Hilton opens up about her past in her new tell-all Paris: The Memoir. Picture: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images/AFP.

Even though she was famous as a sex symbol, Hilton confesses that, partly due to her horrific stay in a boarding school for troubled teens, she “feared sex” and “hated” the idea of it.

Craving intimacy, she loved kissing, she writes, but would “freak out” if it led to sex, which sometimes led to her being branded “frigid” or a “c**k-tease” or accused of “faking it”.

The Stars are Blind singer writes that friends would talk to her about having orgasms and “I was thinking, ‘Sure. That doesn’t even exist.’ I thought it was something in the movies.”

Snippets of the tape came out while she was in Australia promoting The Simple Life.

Within hours, news of the tape was everywhere, along with rumours that it would be followed by a full-length porno.

Hilton rang up Salomon and begged him not to release it.

“He sounded distant and cool,” she writes, “saying it was too late, it was already out there. He said he had every right to sell something that belonged to him – something that had a lot of financial value.”

The former socialite says the tape’s release was devastating, causing immense anguish to her family.

The Simple Life put Paris Hilton and her best friend Nicole Richie on the map in the noughties. Picture: E! Entertainment
The Simple Life put Paris Hilton and her best friend Nicole Richie on the map in the noughties. Picture: E! Entertainment
Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie starred on The Simple Life from 2003 to 2007. Picture: Peter Kramer/Getty Images
Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie starred on The Simple Life from 2003 to 2007. Picture: Peter Kramer/Getty Images

“The release of that video cost me an insane amount of money,” she writes, “and more important, it devastated my family. And it will never go away. It’s out there waiting for my children, who will be confronted with it someday.”

Hilton also goes into great detail about the time she spent attending Utah’s Provo Canyon school – a controversial boarding school and “youth residential treatment centre” for troubled teens.

She claims to have undergone physical, sexual and psychological abuse there, and even testified about it before the Utah Senate in 2021 – leading to reform for residential care for teens.

Hilton’s parents, Rick and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kathy Hilton, sent their eldest child there after she constantly snuck out to New York nightclubs to party – often landing herself on US celebrity gossip column Page Six.

Paris Hilton’s parents, Rick and Kathy Hilton, sent the socialite to a school for troubled teens in Utah. Picture: Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
Paris Hilton’s parents, Rick and Kathy Hilton, sent the socialite to a school for troubled teens in Utah. Picture: Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

“Sometimes party nights went on for days, and I came home to find Mum sitting on my bed crying,” she writes.

The stay is still a touchy subject in the Hilton family.

“The decision to send me away is a rough topic for my parents,” she admits. “They haven’t shown me any records [from it] … We’re all living with the brutal legacy of this the best way we know how, and they have expressed regret, in their way.”

“For a long time, I just wanted to hear them say, ‘I’m sorry we made a terrible mistake.’ But they’re just not there yet. Maybe they never will be. And that’s OK.”

The former model also reveals that, as a middle-schooler, she was groomed by an eighth-grade teacher who called her almost every night, telling her “how amazingly mature, beautiful and intelligent” she was.

Hilton writes that the teacher, “Mr. Abercrombie”, groomed her by explaining that Priscilla Presley was 14 when Elvis Presley “fell in love with her”.

Eventually, he came to her family’s home while her parents were away and the two kissed – and were eventually caught together in a car by her mum and dad.

Paris Hilton, seen here with sister Nicky, says she worried her mother Kathy with her constant partying when she was younger. Picture: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images
Paris Hilton, seen here with sister Nicky, says she worried her mother Kathy with her constant partying when she was younger. Picture: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images

In a recent Glamour interview, Hilton also revealed that she was roofied and raped at the age of 15 by a man she met at a Los Angeles mall.

“I have visions of him on top of me, covering my mouth, being like, ‘You’re dreaming, you’re dreaming,’ and whispering that in my ear,” she said

Hilton also writes about her first serious boyfriend, model Jason Shaw. The two were engaged from 2002 to 2003.

“I loved Jason, and we talked about spending the rest of our lives together, but I knew I wasn’t in the right place to make that kind of commitment,” she writes. “It had nothing to do with him … I just wasn’t capable of being honest or loyal or whole.”

Paris Hilton is now married to businessman Carter Reum and the pair welcomed their first baby on January. Picture: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Paris Hilton is now married to businessman Carter Reum and the pair welcomed their first baby on January. Picture: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

When Hilton found herself pregnant, she was “paralysed with anxiety”.

Raised Catholic, Hilton says she struggled with opting to get an abortion, but knows that she “made the right choice”.

“Trying to continue that pregnancy with the physical and emotional issues I was dealing with at the time would have been a train wreck for everyone involved,” she writes. “At that moment in my life, I was in no way capable of being a mother.”

Hilton eventually found her happy ending with venture capitalist, Carter Reum, 42, who she married in 2021. The couple announced the birth, via surrogate, of their first child, a son named Phoenix, on social media, in January.

This story originally appeared on New York Post and is republished here with permission.

Originally published as Paris Hilton says she had nothing to do with the release of her infamous sex tape with ex

Original URL: https://www.thechronicle.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/paris-hilton-says-she-had-nothing-to-do-with-the-release-of-her-infamous-sex-tape-with-ex/news-story/2e3cb247eefaecf166c86bf161d9e4dc