Crystal Hefner, the widow of the late Playboy journal founder Hugh Hefner, is working to maintain 1000’s of intimate photographs in his scrapbooks and journals non-public.
Crystal, 39, filed regulatory complaints with the attorneys basic of California and Illinois, alleging that the Hugh M. Hefner Basis mishandled delicate non-public paperwork. Based on Crystal, the supplies embody scrapbooks containing specific photographs of ladies. She additionally alleges that a number of the photographs are of underage women.
Crystal, who’s being represented by high-profile lawyer Gloria Allred, mentioned that the pictures didn’t seem in Playboy magazines.
Allred mentioned Crystal was eliminated because the chief govt officer of the Hugh M. Hefner Basis after she voiced issues over publishing the non-public scrapbooks and diary.
“My focus is on how Hugh Hefner’s private scrapbooks chronicle non-public moments that happened behind closed doorways,” Crystal mentioned throughout a press convention on Feb. 17.
“There are critical and unresolved issues in regards to the scope of what these books include. The supplies span many years, starting within the Nineteen Sixties, and should embody photographs of women who had been underage on the time and couldn’t consent to how their photographs can be retained or managed.”
Crystal Hefner (L), widow of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, and lawyer Gloria Allred maintain a press convention to announce steps they’re taking to guard sexual photographs and details about girls in Hefner’s private scrapbooks and diary in Los Angeles on Feb. 17, 2026.
Frederic J. Brown / AFP by way of Getty Photographs
Crystal claimed that lots of the scrapbooks “can also include photographs of ladies who didn’t consent to their photographs being taken within the first place.”
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“The scrapbooks embody nude photographs, photographs taken earlier than and after sexual exercise, and different deeply intimate moments. They include intimate materials involving girls who at the moment are moms, grandmothers, professionals and personal residents who’ve spent many years constructing their lives with no thought these photographs had been nonetheless being hoarded,” she continued.
“I imagine they embody girls, and presumably women, who by no means agreed to lifelong non-public possession of their bare photographs, and who haven’t any transparency into the place their pictures are, how they’re being saved, or what’s going to occur to them subsequent.”
She mentioned that she is “deeply fearful about these photographs getting out” on account of “synthetic intelligence, deepfakes, digital scanning, on-line marketplaces and information breaches.”
“A single safety failure might devastate 1000’s of lives,” she added.
“This isn’t about cash. I’m looking for dignity, security and the destruction of non-consensual intimate supplies in order that exploitation doesn’t proceed beneath the banner of philanthropy. 1000’s of ladies could also be affected. This can be a civil rights concern. Ladies’s our bodies aren’t property, not historical past, and never collectibles. And no group ought to be allowed to assert the language of civil rights whereas denying girls their most simple one: the correct to manage their very own our bodies and pictures,” Crystal concluded.
Allred alleged the muse has in its possession “3,000 private scrapbooks containing 1000’s of nude photographs of ladies in addition to Hefner’s diary, containing extremely private info concerning his sexual exploits, together with names of ladies he slept with, notes describing the intercourse acts that they carried out and in some cases even info monitoring girls’s menstrual cycles.”
Allred mentioned that they’re asking the attorneys basic to “provoke a immediate and thorough investigation of the Hugh M. Hefner Basis’s actions.”
“Crystal is particularly involved that these scrapbooks might include photographs of minor women. Furthermore, Crystal can be involved that a number of the photographs within the scrapbooks could have been taken with out the knowledgeable consent of the grownup girls depicted, resembling whereas they had been intoxicated,” Allred added.
The Hugh M. Hefner Basis was established in 1964 “to embolden those that rebelled towards outdated viewpoints and pushed ahead new ones,” in accordance to its web site.
Nevertheless, now the non-profit group says that it “helps and funds in the present day’s pioneers, defending civil rights and liberties, with particular emphasis on First Modification rights and rational intercourse and drug insurance policies.”
The inspiration has not made any feedback concerning Crystal and Allred’s claims as of this writing.
Hugh Hefner died of pure causes on Sept. 27, 2017, on the age of 91. He helped usher within the Nineteen Sixties sexual revolution along with his groundbreaking journal, round which he constructed a multi-million-dollar enterprise empire.
He started his profession working as a copywriter for Esquire earlier than founding Playboy in 1953 with the assistance of a number of traders, together with his mom, who loaned him $1,000, in keeping with a New York Instances profile.
Hefner was married thrice — in 1949, 1989 and most lately in 2012 to Crystal.
Crystal opened up days after the loss of life of her late husband, saying, “I haven’t been capable of convey myself to jot down most individuals again to thank them for his or her condolences.”
“I’m heartbroken. I’m nonetheless in disbelief,” she added.
Crystal referred to as her late husband “an American hero” and “a pioneer.”
“A sort and humble soul who opened up his life and residential to the world. I felt how a lot he cherished me. I cherished him a lot. I’m so grateful. He gave me life. He gave me course. He taught me kindness. I’ll really feel eternally grateful to have been by his aspect, holding his hand, and telling him how a lot I really like him,” she mentioned.
— With information from International Information
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