The moment became a defining and deeply distressing event in her life, shaping how she was viewed before she even had the chance to establish her own public identity.
The tape, which involved the now-44-year-old Hilton and her then-boyfriend Rick Salomon, was leaked in 2004.
Reports at the time stated that it was shared without her consent. Salomon, who was 35 years old during the recording, was significantly older than her and the age difference became a major part of the public discussion that followed.
The release of the footage turned into a massive media storm that followed Hilton everywhere, especially as the clip spread quickly during a time when online sharing was growing fast.
Hilton was mocked, judged, and criticized by the public for years after the leak. She has repeatedly described how damaging it was for her and how the intense attention shaped her early career in ways she did not choose or control.
The shift in public understanding has helped her see how different the response would be if the same situation happened in 2025.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, Hilton said: “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’.”
She added that the entire experience was both ‘painful and humiliating’, and it marked her life in ways she could not escape.
The public criticism shaped much of her early adulthood and stayed with her long after the initial shock faded.
Earlier this year, Hilton sat down with Louis Theroux at Spotify Beach in Cannes, France, to talk about the overwhelming heartbreak and devastation she experienced because of the tape.
The conversation gave her room to speak about what she endured beyond the headlines.
Her words showed how deeply the experience stayed with her, even decades later, and how the emotional weight of it has shaped major parts of her life. She explained that the betrayal she felt still lingers, because it changed how she saw trust and how she understood the risks of being in the public eye at a young age.
Hilton continued: “Back then, the media, the public, everyone was just so cruel to me. It was so heartbreaking and devastating. I had worked so hard and I wanted to be respected, I was about to come out with my reality show and then all of a sudden this happened to me.”
The new law also covers AI-generated “deepfakes,” which have become a growing concern. Anyone found guilty of sharing or distributing such material can face up to three years in federal prison, showing how seriously lawmakers are starting to treat non-consensual image sharing.
