Paris Hilton created a "Barbie doll perfect life" persona as a "trauma response" to the alleged abuse she suffered at school

Speaking at the 'A Day of Unreasonable Conversation' summit at the Getty Center in Los Angeles on Monday (25.03.24), she said: "After what I had experienced as a teenager, it was just so traumatising that when I got out of there, I just said, 'I never want to think about this ever again,' and I created this kind of Barbie doll perfect life character.

"It was something that I didn't even realize until being an adult now that that was a trauma response to what I had went through, and just being in so much pain and just having such trauma from what I experienced, I created this character where I just didn't have to think about it.

"And then I ended up getting on the show 'The Simple Life', and then I really had to play that character, and the whole world was seeing it... people just assumed that that's who I really was in real life."

Paris - who has Phoenix, 14 months, and London, four months, with husband Carter Reum - is proud to now be an advocate for the "hundreds of thousands of children being sent to the troubled teen industry every year" who are being abused

The heiress previously admitted she spent years "scared to fall asleep" because she would be gripped by "terrifying" nightmares as a result of her teenage experiences.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph newspaper in December, she admitted: "Up until sharing my story publicly three years ago, I was scared to fall asleep. I wish I could have filmed my dreams and show you what they're like. They're terrifying and I am grateful to be on a path to healing so I don't have to relive them every night."