Crystal Hefner confirms Hugh Hefner had 'thousands' of explicit photos taken without consent

Crystal Hefner has confirmed one of several alarming claims about life in the Playboy Mansion, tweeting her support of former Playmate Holly Madison.

Madison, who dated millionaire Hugh Hefner from 2001 to 2008, last month alleged the magazine founder would regularly take and share photos of scantily clad or naked drunk women without consent.

Taking to Twitter, Crystal Hefner backed her claim, revealing she destroyed “thousands” of photos Hugh had kept, in order to prevent more women from being humiliated.

“I found thousands of those disposable camera photos you are talking about @hollymadison,” she wrote.

“I immediately ripped them up and destroyed every single one of them for you and the countless other women in them. They’re gone.”

Hefner, 35, was married to Hugh from 2012 until his death in 2017.

Hefner’s tweet comes as new series, Secrets of Playboy, lifts the lid on the “dark underbelly” of the Playboy empire, one rife with drug use, sexual abuse and bestiality.

The 10-part series which premiered in the US this week includes interviews with ex-girlfriends Madison and Sondra Theodore, though it is understood Hefner does not feature.

Theodore, who was with Hugh Hefner from 1976 to 1981, gave similarly disturbing accounts of life in the mansion, even alleging she caught him engaging in sexual activities with her pet.

“The group sex was at least five nights a week,” she said of her time in the infamous mansion.

“They had a protocol. He liked to direct and you didn’t segue away from it because you could tell it irritated him,” she says in the series, adding that the sex “broke me like you’d break a horse”.

Theodore also accused Hefner of recording her and other women in the bedroom.

“Well he had tapes on everyone,” she said.

“The first time I looked up at the two screens he had for the TV in the bedroom and I realised it was me, I’m like ‘Woah, what are you doing?'”

“And when we started bringing other people into the bedroom, some girls had the same reaction like ‘Woah,'” she continues, claiming that Hugh would reply something like, ‘Oh, I can turn it off. If it’s not okay, I’ll turn it off.’ “

Appearing on the Power: Hugh Hefner podcast in December, Madison recalled that Hefner would often take “sexually explicit” photos of intoxicated women who didn’t already live in the mansion without their consent.

Holly Madison (bottom centre) has been the most outspoken about her traumatic years as a playmate. Photo / Supplied

“When girls would go out with Hef, in the limo, in the nightclub and come back to his room after, he was constantly taking photos of these women on his disposable camera,” Madison said.

“And these women were almost always intoxicated. I know I was, heavily intoxicated,” she added, explaining that these women weren’t “regular girlfriends” but “new girls who were joining him for a night for the first time, or women who had flown out from across the country to test for a centrefold in allegedly professional conditions”.

She said the women “oftentimes would be pressured, not necessarily directly by him, he would have some of his girlfriends do it too, pressure them to come upstairs”.

After taking photos of the women in his room, for example, “in his bathtub with your top off and some other girl is doing some sexually explicit pose,” Madison said Hefner would make copies and distribute the images.

Crystal Hefner has backed one of several sickening allegations made against Hugh Hefner in a series of bombshell new interviews. Photo / Getty Images

“I don’t know if he just assumed that was okay because all these women want to be in the magazine so bad so they must be okay with getting naked,” Madison said, adding that when some images surfaced online, she eventually confronted her boyfriend about it.

“I went to Hef and said, ‘Can you stop handing out our naked pictures to everybody, because one of the girls is putting it on the internet,'” Madison said.

His reaction was to tell the woman who posted them that “Holly narced you out,” which led to a confrontation between the women.

Madison said Hefner took satisfaction in creating tension between the playmates.