IN HINDSIGHT

Paris Hilton: Sex Tape Leak Was ‘Like Being Raped’

“It felt like I’d lost part of my soul.”

More than a decade after gaining fame for a leaked sex tape, socialite Paris Hilton said the video’s distribution was “like being raped.” In a new documentary titled The American Meme, Hilton, now 37, said she was crushed when a video featuring her and then-boyfriend Rick Salomon went viral in 2003. “It felt like I'd lost part of my soul and been talked about in such cruel and mean ways. I literally wanted to die at some points. I was like, 'I just don't want to live,' because I thought everything was taken away from me. I didn't want to be known as that,” she was quoted as saying by USA Today. The video, taken of Hilton when she was 19, caused an Internet frenzy when it was leaked online just weeks before she became a reality TV star with the debut of The Simple Life.