Paris Hilton says 2004 sex tape leak ‘will hurt me for the rest of my life’

‘I felt like my life was over,’ said Hilton

Paris Hilton has said she still experiences post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the sex tape that was previously leaked online.

In 2004, a private sex tape featuring Hilton and her then-boyfriend Rick Salomon was leaked onto the internet. Salomon later sold a longer version of the tape himself.

Hilton opened up about the “humiliating” experience in a new interview with Vanity Fair, stating that the video remains “something that will hurt me for the rest of my life”. 

“It’s always there in the back of my mind. When it happened, people were so mean about it to me. The way that I was spoken about on nightly talk shows and the media, to see things with my family was just heartbreaking,” she said.

The 40-year-old continued: “I would be in tears every single day, I didn’t want to leave my house, I felt like my life was over.”

“It was a private experience between two people,” she said. “You love someone, you trust someone and to have your trust betrayed like that and for the whole world to be watching and laughing.

“It was even more hurtful to me to have these people think that I did this on purpose – that killed me.”

Hilton added that “it still gives me post-traumatic stress to talk about it”.

(AFP via Getty Images)

In her 2020 documentaryThis Is Paris, she said that she had felt “electronically raped” by what Salomon had done with the video.   

After the tape was leaked in 2004, Hilton issued a public statement expressing that she did not approve of the tape’s release.

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Salomon went on to sue Hilton for defamation. Hilton, however, countersued Salomon for the release of the tape. They settled out of court in 2005.