In the A&E's docuseries, Madison claims that Hugh had 'mountains of revenge porn.'
Hugh Hefner's widow, Crystal, is sending a message to Holly Madison.
Holly, the former Girls Next Door star, opened up about her time at the Playboy mansion and dating Hugh from 2001 to 2008 in the A&E docuseries Secrets of Playboy. In the second episode, titled "The Girl Next Door," Holly claimed that Hugh would blackmail them and alleged that he had "mountains of revenge porn" of the girls.
"When I lived at the mansion, I was afraid to leave. Something that was always lingering in the back of my mind, I think since the very beginning, was that if I left, there was just this mountain of revenge porn just waiting to come out," she alleged. "When you would go out with Hef, he's taking all kinds of naked pictures of these women when we're wasted out of our minds. And he would print out, like, eight copies for him and all the women, you pass them around. It was just gross."
Crystal took notice of Holly's allegations and said that she "found thousands" of disposable cameras and "destroyed" them.
"I found thousands of those disposable camera photos you are talking about @hollymadison. I immediately ripped them up and destroyed every single one of them for you and the countless other women in them," Crystal tweeted on Monday. "They're gone."
Hugh died in September 2017 at the age of 91. Various allegations against the late Playboy founder were brought up against him in the new series. His former girlfriend, Sondra Theodore, who met him when she was 19 years old and he was 50, alleged that he groomed her from the moment they started dating.
Hugh's family no longer has ownership of Playboy. A spokesperson for the company responded to the new allegations, telling ET, "Today’s Playboy is not Hugh Hefner’s Playboy. We trust and validate these women and their stories and we strongly support those individuals who have come forward to share their experiences. As a brand with sex positivity at its core, we believe safety, security, and accountability are paramount. The most important thing we can do right now is actively listen and learn from their experiences. We will never be afraid to confront the parts of our legacy as a company that do not reflect our values today. As an organization with a more than 80 percent female workforce, we are committed to our ongoing evolution as a company and to driving positive change for our communities."
Both Sondra and Holly also said that being in the mansion was like being in a cult and that it mentally affected them over the years.
"He had this way of making everything go away and questioning yourself…He said, 'Do you think that they can just stay in my house and not sleep with me?' And that was, Whoa!" Theodore told ET. "Would you have dinner guests and expect that of them? No. It was just so cold and callous and not the man that I've fallen in love with. I didn't know who this man was. But then he became the man, his charm, his words, and it reeled me back in and that's how he kept me there. He kept painting this fairy tale to me, and making me question what I've seen. He had a way of twisting my world really badly."
Holly, meanwhile, eventually decided to leave Hugh and the mansion in 2008.
"In 2008, my last year there, the other girls were leaving. It looked like it was just going to be me. I finally thought I got what I wanted out of this situation and it was finally like this committed relationship. But during that time period, he started getting even meaner," Holly said in the episode.
The final straw came after an "altercation" between Holly and Hugh in which Girls Next Door co-star Bridget Marquardt alleged the mogul called Holly a "c**t."
"At that point, there were no women to pit me against. There was none of that left and that's when I had the realization, and I was like, 'Whoa, he's been the problem the whole time,'" Holly recalled. "I had been locked into the mentality of the mansion and had felt like there's no other future for me outside. But I finally saw him for who he was and I had to go. I just felt it so strongly that I had to leave."
Amid the allegations and the show airing, Hugh's youngest son, Cooper, came to his late father's defense, criticizing the "salacious" stories that have emerged.
"Some may not approve of the life my Dad chose, but my father was not a liar," Cooper tweeted this week. "However unconventional, he was sincere in his approach and lived honestly. He was generous in nature and cared deeply for people."
He concluded his tweet, "These salacious stories are a case study of regret becoming revenge."
For more on Hugh, see below.
RELATED CONTENT:
