AceShowbiz - Paris Hilton is horrified to discover children are still sent to schools for troubled youths. The hotel heiress, 42, has been open about the abuse she suffered at the institutions when she was sent to them after her family feared she was falling into wild ways in her new autobiography "Paris: The Memoir".

In an interview to promote the book, she told The Guardian she believes she wouldn't have been "sent away" to the school if her attention deficit disorder had been diagnosed in her early teens. "We're so creative, we're constantly thinking, our minds move as fast as a race car. My childhood would have been very different if I'd been diagnosed, I definitely wouldn't have been sent away," she said about those with ADD.

At one of the specialist schools where Paris was sent, she endured "raps" sessions in which kids would verbally abuse one another before being told to cuddle. And at the institution where she was sent in Utha, it was regulation for children to get invasive cervical exams as punishment, as well solitary confinement in the nude and to be whipped, sedated and beaten.

Paris said, "What's horrifying is the fact that it's still happening today. It's a multibillion-dollar industry with hundreds of thousands of kids being sent to those places every year. It's heartbreaking to me that people could treat children like this."

"Now, hearing about so many things, the deaths that have happened, it's just heartbreaking, so, even though it's hard for me to talk about, I think it's so important for people to understand what's happening behind closed doors."

Paris, whose son Phoenix who she has with husband Carter Reum, 42, was born via surrogacy in January, added about the institutions, "They brainwash the kids and they also do that to the parents. They say, 'Your daughter is a liar, she's just manipulating you.' The moment I got out of there, it was the happiest day in my life. I was so grateful."