"Caged" Paris Finds God, Phones Walters

Paris Hilton dropped her appeal, now she's dropping the act.

Twin Towers Correctional Facility's most famous inmate spoke out in an impromptu phone interview with Barbara Walters Sunday, telling the View master that, after less than a week behind bars, she's already a changed woman.

"I used to act dumb," Hilton told Walters. "It was an act. That act is no longer cute. It is not who I am, nor do I want to be that person for the young girls who look up to me." 

"Now, I would like to make a difference...God has given me this new chance."

Walters, who did not record the interview, said that Hilton "sounded tired but totally aware of what she was saying."

During the call, the 26-year-old heiress also confirmed to Walters how devastating and both physically and emotionally debilitating her first three days in the Century Regional Detention Facility were last week.

"I was not eating or sleeping," she said. "I was severely depressed and felt as if I was in a cage...It was a horrible experience."

Her stay in Twin Towers, where she was placed after a frenzied legal tug-of-war between Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer, is marginally better.

Hilton said that she was "hanging in there," that she was under the guidance of a spiritual adviser, and that the women housed alongside her were "friendly" and the guards "fair."

She couldn't say the same about the media.

Hilton took the opportunity to set the record straight over some of the reports of her lead-up to incarceration. The heiress, who has been wearing the standard-issue orange and brown jumpsuits and who says she's been reading the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal behind bars, said that, despite rumors to the contrary, she was not on antidepressants before entering jail.

As for Hilton's take on how she ended up in the slammer in the first place, she agrees with her spiritual adviser that her soul was crying out.

"My spirit or soul did not like the way I was being seen, and that is why I was sent to jail," she said. "God has released me."

She also said that during her three-day stay in the Century Regional Detention Facility, she was not "wailing, sobbing or screaming." As for her instantly infamous outburst Friday when Sauer revoked her home detention and ordered her back into the penal system, Hilton told Walters that she did not cry out, "It's not fair, Mom!" in response to her sentence. Rather, she claims, she uttered the phrase when bailiffs prohibited her from hugging her mother goodbye before getting escorted out of the courtroom.

The call, first reported by E! Online senior editor Marc Malkin, served as Hilton's first unfiltered non-lawyer vetted words to the media since surrendering following the MTV Movie Awards over a week ago and came spontaneously on Sunday as she attempted to phone her mother, Kathy Hilton.

When Paris dialed home, the Hilton matriarch was already on the line to Walters, whom Kathy had called herself. (Walters has been among those jockeying for the Paris post-jail "get.") When Paris rang in, Kathy informed her daughter that Walters was on the other line. The locked-up Simple Lifer then asked if she could speak directly with the veteran newswoman; Walters wisely agreed to accept the collect call.

As it is, Paris Hilton had a busy day Sunday. In addition to speaking with Walters, she also had a visit from sister Nicky and on-again, off-again boyfriend Stavros Niarchos. They were the first to come calling to Paris since Sauer sent her to the facility on Friday. Paris has been kept isolated in the Twin Towers' medical ward and Sunday was the first day she was allowed visitors.

On her way out of the facility, Nicky Hilton and Niarchos did their best to avoid a swarm of lurking reporters and paparazzi, though Nicky did say that her sister was "being strong."

On Saturday, Paris released a statement through her lawyer saying she would not appeal her sentence and would serve at least 23 days behind bars for violating probation in connection with an alcohol-related reckless-driving charge.

"While I greatly appreciate the sheriff's concern for my health and welfare, after meeting with doctors, I intend to serve my time as ordered by the judge," she said. "This is by far the hardest thing I have ever done. During the past several days, I have had a lot of time to reflect and have already learned a bitter but important lesson from this experience."

According to Sheriff's Department spokesperson Steve Whitmore, Hilton is currently being housed alone in a 120-square-foot room with a toilet, sink and "sliver of a window." The cost to remain in one of Twin Towers' finest suites, including the fees spent on her continued psychological and medical testing, totals $1,109.78 per day, Whitmore confirmed. All of which is on the taxpayers' dime. According to TMZ, the total also includes the cost of psychotropic medication that Hilton has been prescribed.

Baca said on Friday that Hilton had suffered from "severe medical problems" during her brief, initial sojourn into jail last week and that it was her "inexplicable deterioration" that made them concerned. He said his department learned that Hilton had not been taking a certain medication that was prescribed to her while behind bars, but did not reveal the name or nature of the medication.

The sheriff, who has come under fire for his "reassignment" of Hilton last week, agreed to meet with one of his harshest critics Monday, the Reverend Al Sharpton.

"If anything can come out of this Paris Hilton story, it should be to put some light on the fact that there are many people based on their income that just cannot get relief," Sharpton said after emerging from the closed-door, half-hour session. 

Meanwhile, attorney Gloria Allred announced that she would be filing a racial and disability discrimination claim against both Baca and Los Angeles County on behalf of a female African-American inmate at the Century Regional Detention Center. Allred and her team claim that their client, like Hilton, suffers from "serious medical issues," but that she has yet to receive similar treatment. It's the first of many such claims expected againt the sheriff and county after he tried to send Hilton home.

"It's not right that a young white celebrity female should receive the medical care that she needs in the L.A. County jail system, but an older African-American woman, who is not well known, receives inadequate and substandard medical treatment," Allred said.

Such a claim must be lodged before a lawsuit can be filed. There was no immediate comment from county officials.

On Tuesday, representatives of the activist group Project Islamic HOPE are set to petition the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, not only asking the politicians to launch an investigation into Baca's unilateral move but also to determine which other inmates may be suffering from emotional or physical problems and request that they, too, receive the same treatment as Hilton.

Also on Tuesday, Hilton will once again be eligible to receive visitors at her cell, and parents Rick and Kathy Hilton are expected to be there.

As for what she may do upon leaving the facility, she told Walters that she wants to parlay her fame and power into helping others, possibly by raising funds and awareness for breast cancer or multiple sclerosis, both diseases that run in her family. She also expressed interest in lending her name to a Ronald McDonald-like home for children, where toy companies could donate products.

Hilton has also been spending her time behind bars writing, but her camp has not confirmed pre-incarceration speculation that she has a deal to pen a jailhouse memoir.

Hilton is eligible for release on June 25.

In the meantime, perhaps thinking the Hilton camp would be too busy to notice, the mind(s) behind the supposedly show-all Website parisexposed.com have relaunched their venture, despite a federal court injunction prohibiting them from posting ultra-personal items such as bank records and address books, as well as profiting from her likeness via the dozens of racy photos and video clips the site claims to offer.

A rep for Hilton couldn't be reached for comment but, considering she sued the site in January for invasion of privacy and copyright violation, it's unlikely that she will remain re-exposed for long.

(View our photo gallery chronicling Paris' travails, from her original alcohol-related bust to her return trip to the pokey.)