Paris Hilton: My sex tape would be viewed as revenge porn today

Paris Hilton has said in an interview she found it 'healing' that the non-consensual release of intimate footage of her in 2004 would now be seen as a revenge porn offence. Photo / Getty Images

Paris Hilton has said a sex tape of her leaked by a former boyfriend in 2004 would be “illegal” today.

The 44-year-old media personality said she found it “healing” that the non-consensual release of intimate footage would now be seen as a revenge porn offence.

Hilton told the Sunday Times: “Like, that would be illegal today. People realise just how wrong it was. And that has also been healing for me, for people to be, like, wow, Paris was just a teenage girl being taken advantage of by this older guy.”

In June 2004, Rick Salomon, Hilton’s former boyfriend, then 35, began selling a video of the pair having sex three years earlier, when she was 19. Marketed as One Night in Paris, the footage went on sale weeks before the premiere of The Simple Life, her reality TV show.

Critics questioned the timing, but Hilton has always maintained the tape was released without her consent.

She told the Sunday Times that the reaction to the leaked film “was just very misogynistic”.

“I just felt like the world judged me from that point on,” she said.

Hilton, who called the episode “painful and humiliating”, says she now takes comfort in changing attitudes towards revenge porn.

Laws in US and UK have changed

In May, United States President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act, which imposes penalties for online sexual exploitation. The law makes it a federal crime to “knowingly publish” or threaten to publish intimate images without consent, including AI-generated “deepfakes”.

In England and Wales, sharing private sexual images without consent became illegal under the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, later updated by the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 to criminalise threats to release such material.

Hilton has previously said the sex tape prevented the public from viewing her like other “elegant, amazing women”, including Princess Diana.

In an interview with Marie Claire in 2017, she said: “It’s really hurtful, because my whole life I really looked up to Princess Diana, all these elegant, amazing women, and I feel like [Salomon] just took that all away from me,” she said.

“I could have been like that, but because of that tape, I will always be judged and thought of as whatever they say about me because of a private moment between my boyfriend and me.”

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