Defend the Bunnies.
Hugh Hefner’s widow raised racy alarm bells Tuesday that hundreds of girls’s bare photographs — and, maybe, much more intimate moments — might be uncovered if the Playboy founder’s intercourse diary and private scrapbooks are ever made public.
A grim Crystal Hefner, 39, sat alongside feminist superlawyer Gloria Allred to disclose they’re requesting the lawyer generals of California and Illinois examine the huge trove of extremely private recordsdata allegedly held by the Hugh M. Hefner Basis.
The still-hidden supplies return to the Nineteen Sixties and embrace 3,000 of Hugh Hefner’s private scrapbooks containing nude photographs, photos of sexual exercise and, probably, underage women, Crystal Hefner warned.
“1000’s of girls could also be affected,” the widow mentioned in Allred’s Los Angeles workplace. “This can be a civil rights problem. Girls’s our bodies should not property, not historical past and never collectibles.
“No group must be allowed to say the language of civil rights whereas denying girls their most simple one: the correct to manage their very own our bodies and pictures.”
Allred mentioned she filed regulatory complaints with California Lawyer Basic Rob Bonta, in addition to his Illinois counterpart Kwame Raoul, calling for probes and potential remedial authorized motion.
The dramatic demand got here after Crystal Hefner claimed she was unilaterally kicked off the muse’s board Monday as she raised privateness and consent considerations for the ladies depicted within the recordsdata.
The previous Playboy Playmate of the Month married Hefner in 2012, turning into his third spouse. She was at his bedside when he died 5 years later, at age 91.
After Hefner’s dying, she has more and more been vocal about her allegedly “poisonous” life within the Playboy Mansion, ultimately penning a blistering tell-all in 2023 titled “Solely Say Good Issues.”
Final 12 months, she obtained engaged to a marine biologist and introduced she’d return to her maiden identify Crystal Harris — though she was recognized by Allred on Tuesday as “Crystal Hefner.”
A day earlier than the information convention, Crystal Hefner posted a handwritten word on Instagram she claimed was from Hugh Hefner’s notebooks.
“Anybody offended by the thought of girls being intercourse objects ought to do not forget that all of it started with Eve within the Backyard of Eden,” the web page reads.
“It was God’s thought.”
The misogynist message was certainly one of hundreds Hefner wrote, she claimed.
However the considerations raised by Crystal Hefner and Allred throughout their information convention had been much less about sexism and extra about privateness.
The pair argued hundreds of girls want assurance that Hugh Hefner’s information — together with a private “intercourse diary” — will likely be saved securely and by no means distributed.
“The scrapbooks comprise nude photographs, photographs taken earlier than, after and through sexual exercise and different intimate moments,” Crystal Hefner mentioned. “They comprise intimate materials involving girls who at the moment are moms, grandmothers, skilled and personal residents who’ve spent a long time constructing their lives with no thought these photographs had been nonetheless being saved.
“This isn’t archival preservation, this isn’t historical past, that is management. A single safety failure may devastate hundreds of lives.”
Hefner clarified she wasn’t concentrating on already-published photographs in Playboy, however to guarantee that Hugh Hefner’s private information are saved underneath wraps.
Allred raised the potential that the recordsdata embrace photographs of underage women who couldn’t legally consent. She additionally argued many ladies depicted couldn’t have consented in the event that they had been intoxicated.
The lawyer dodged when requested if such non-consensual photographs must be destroyed or if an injunction was vital.
“We wish the correct of girls and women to be protected, and so we’ll depart it to the lawyer generals to find out how finest to guard these objects,” she mentioned.
Hefner’s non-public journal — which Allred mentioned detailed his sexual exploits and even tracked girls’s menstrual cycles — was additionally faraway from the Playboy Mansion after he died, the pair mentioned.
Allred mentioned the muse didn’t give a transparent reply as to its whereabouts, solely telling Crystal Hefner it was put in a field and sealed.
“That undoubtedly could be a delicate merchandise,” she mentioned.
The Hugh M. Hefner basis didn’t reply to a request for remark.
