Protect the Bunnies.
Hugh Hefner’s widow raised racy alarm bells Tuesday that thousands of women’s naked images — and, perhaps, even more intimate moments — could be exposed if the Playboy founder’s sex diary and personal scrapbooks are ever made public.
A grim Crystal Hefner, 39, sat alongside feminist superlawyer Gloria Allred to reveal they’re requesting the attorney generals of California and Illinois investigate the vast trove of highly personal files allegedly held by the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation.
The still-hidden materials go back to the 1960s and include 3,000 of Hugh Hefner’s personal scrapbooks containing nude images, pictures of sexual activity and, potentially, underage girls, Crystal Hefner warned.
“Thousands of women may be affected,” the widow said in Allred’s Los Angeles office. “This is a civil rights issue. Women’s bodies are not property, not history and not collectibles.
“No organization should be allowed to claim the language of civil rights while denying women their most basic one: the right to control their own bodies and images.”
Allred said she filed regulatory complaints with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, as well as his Illinois counterpart Kwame Raoul, calling for probes and potential remedial legal action.
The dramatic demand came after Crystal Hefner claimed she was unilaterally kicked off the foundation’s board Monday as she raised privacy and consent concerns for the women depicted in the files.
The former Playboy Playmate of the Month married Hefner in 2012, becoming his third wife. She was at his bedside when he died five years later, at age 91.
After Hefner’s death, she has increasingly been vocal about her allegedly “toxic” life in the Playboy Mansion, eventually penning a blistering tell-all in 2023 titled “Only Say Good Things.”
Last year, she got engaged to a marine biologist and announced she’d return to her maiden name Crystal Harris — although she was identified by Allred on Tuesday as “Crystal Hefner.”
A day before the news conference, Crystal Hefner posted a handwritten note on Instagram she claimed was from Hugh Hefner’s notebooks.
“Anyone offended by the idea of women being sex objects should remember that it all began with Eve in the Garden of Eden,” the page reads.
“It was God’s idea.”
The misogynist message was one of thousands Hefner wrote, she claimed.
But the concerns raised by Crystal Hefner and Allred during their news conference were less about sexism and more about privacy.
The pair argued thousands of women need assurance that Hugh Hefner’s records — including a personal “sex diary” — will be kept securely and never distributed.
“The scrapbooks contain nude images, images taken before, after and during sexual activity and other intimate moments,” Crystal Hefner said. “They contain intimate material involving women who are now mothers, grandmothers, professional and private citizens who have spent decades building their lives with no idea these images were still being stored.
“This is not archival preservation, this is not history, this is control. A single security failure could devastate thousands of lives.”
Hefner clarified she wasn’t targeting already-published images in Playboy, but to assure that Hugh Hefner’s personal records are kept under wraps.
Allred raised the potential that the files include images of underage girls who could not legally consent. She also argued many women depicted could not have consented if they were intoxicated.
The lawyer dodged when asked if such non-consensual images should be destroyed or if an injunction was necessary.
“We want the right of women and girls to be protected, and so we will leave it to the attorney generals to determine how best to protect those items,” she said.
Hefner’s private journal — which Allred said detailed his sexual exploits and even tracked women’s menstrual cycles — was also removed from the Playboy Mansion after he died, the pair said.
Allred said the foundation didn’t give a clear answer as to its whereabouts, only telling Crystal Hefner it was put in a box and sealed.
“That definitely would be a sensitive item,” she said.
The Hugh M. Hefner foundation didn’t respond to a request for comment.
