A location that advertises itself as a place of healing but has endured more than 40 years of abuse allegations, lawsuits, silent protests, and survivor testimonies is incredibly unsettling. Located in Utah’s canyon country, Provo Canyon School is a private residential treatment facility that has been in operation since 1971. On paper, it helps young people who are struggling. In reality, it has been much darker if survivor accounts are taken seriously, and there are now far too many to ignore.
The school is located between Springville, Utah, and Provo, two places that most Americans wouldn’t immediately associate with controversy. However, the location is significant to former residents. Media personality Paris Hilton, who attended PCS in the late 1990s, bluntly called it “the worst of the worst” of several programs for troubled teenagers. When you know she had other people to compare it to, that statement, devoid of drama, hits home.
Much of this was made public by Hilton’s 2020 documentary. She recounted being strip-searched as soon as she arrived, kept in isolation for almost twenty-four hours, and given drugs that she claimed she never gave permission for. According to reports, physical restraint was frequently used. These weren’t casual assertions made in passing; rather, they were specific, intentional, and supported by other people who came forward at the same time. During her time there, tattoo artist and TV personality Kat Von D claimed to have seen students being sedated and forced to take drugs. She spoke candidly about the school, refusing to refer to it as a school at all, and described leaving with what she described as severe PTSD. She described it as a lockdown facility. It was exactly that.
Notably, these accounts did not appear out of nowhere in 2020. Legal history at the school dates back to the late 1970s. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in 1978, claiming that students were subjected to solitary confinement, mail censorship, cruel and unusual punishment, and polygraph testing. That same year, three students made an attempt to flee, which speaks volumes. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the pattern of complaints—verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, medical negligence, and false imprisonment—persisted in both individual and class-action lawsuits.
The school had multiple ownership transitions. After acquiring it in 1986, Charter Behavioral Health Systems declared bankruptcy in 2000. It was later acquired by Universal Health Services. Institutional culture is rarely eliminated by ownership changes, and the accusations persisted even after the new name was added to the documents. Police were called to the campus several times between February and April 2023 due to drug paraphernalia discovered on campus, a violent incident that resulted in the death of a staff member, a reported sexual assault, and a riot in the living quarters that resulted in the temporary detention of eight students.
Hilton led hundreds of people, including former students, in a silent demonstration outside the school in October 2020. The image of people who were sent there as teenagers walking the streets of Provo decades later, still bearing the scars of what transpired inside those walls, has a subtle power. The school was not closed as a result of the protest. PCS is still in operation, accredited, and open to referrals.
It’s still unclear if the persistent public pressure will result in any significant regulatory change. The problematic teen industry as a whole is still mainly unregulated. It is evident that Provo Canyon School is no longer a little-known institution. That was ensured by the survivors.
