Paris Hilton backs survivors suing ‘hellish’ NY boarding school over alleged child abuse

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Paris Hilton is standing with 34 former students of a hellish Upstate New York boarding school who are suing the institution and its “network of beneficiaries” for the horrific abuse they allegedly endured as children.

The Family Foundation School was located on an isolated 158-acre campus in Hancock in the Catskill Mountains and operated from 1984 until it shuttered in 2014 amid allegations of systemic abuse at the hands of administrators and staff, including sexual assault, strip searches, being told to dig their own graves and forced to eat their own vomit, according the lawsuits filed by accusers. 

On Nov. 4, a federal judge in Binghamton is set to hear testimony from several survivors of the school, who are expected to recount the abuse they allegedly endured.

Hilton, 45, has become an outspoken advocate for survivors of the troubled-teen industry after revealing the abuse she says she suffered as a teenager at Utah’s Provo Canyon School.

“I stand with the survivors of Family Foundation School as they seek justice and work to hold accountable those who abused them, along with every institution and individual that enabled or profited from that abuse,” Hilton said in a statement shared with The Post.

“No child should ever be harmed in the name of treatment. I hope this lawsuit helps bring the accountability these survivors deserve and sends a clear message that those who exploit or abuse children cannot escape responsibility.”

The law firm leading the lawsuits, Johannesen & Umana, anticipates at least 50 lawsuits being filed against the school and its partners.

“Learning that their abuse generated profit is what showed our clients they had not simply been abused but were victims of labor and sex trafficking,” attorney Elizabeth Johannesen said. 

In 2025, a former teacher at the disgraced school, Paul Geer, was sentenced to 27 years behind bars for two counts of coercing and enticing two children to travel across state lines to engage in unlawful sexual activity and two counts of transporting the children across state lines with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity with those children, according to the Department of Justice.

The new lawsuits not only name the school and its corporate entity, Education Plus, as defendants, but NBT Bank, which lent against the campus, and food company Sysco, which Johannesen accused of looking the other way because it was profiting from the school.

“Epstein’s victims recovered more than $430 million from three banks under federal trafficking law, and we intend to pursue every knowing beneficiary here to the fullest extent of that law,” Johannesen said.

One accuser, who was sent to the school when she was just 14 years old in 2000, said she was isolated, assaulted and deprived of food, according to her lawsuit. 

School staff allegedly forced her to chop off her hair because it was “too sexual,” she claimed in her lawsuit. 

Another accuser, only identified as VP, testified against Geer in the criminal trial and said they will never be the same.

“Our bodies were violated, our childhoods were destroyed, and others walked away with financial benefits while we were left to live with the trauma. We were children, not commodities,” they told The Post. 

Rachele Van Arsdale’s life has been completely ravaged by the trauma she allegedly endured from the sexual abuse and forced labor, according to the lawsuit she filed.

After Geer’s trial, her mental health deteriorated.

She lost her law practice and custody of her own child. While preparing to file her lawsuit, she was admitted to an inpatient clinic in California. Johannesen and her legal partner Luis Umana had to fly across the country to sign the complaint.

“I learned for the first time that I had not just been abused but trafficked by people who were supposed to help me and instead exploited me to make money. My life completely collapsed,” she said.

Education Plus, NBT Bank and Sysco did not return requests for comment.