Nearly a decade after Hugh Hefner’s death, his widow is still dealing with the alleged abuse she experienced being married to him for almost five years — and fighting over private images she says were taken without her consent.
“I had to have sex with strangers I didn’t even know,” Crystal Hefner, 40, told Page Six in an exclusive interview. “It was humiliating. It was embarrassing.”
In February, her attorney, Gloria Allred, announced regulatory complaints in California and Illinois over the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation’s handling of his private archive, including approximately 3,000 scrapbooks allegedly containing intimate photographs.
Crystal said some images were taken without consentand raised concerns about possible images of minors. Hefner’s sons Cooper and Marston, whose mother is Kimberley Conrad, disputed that implication.
Crystal said she wanted women entrusted with the material — and intimate or nonconsensual images destroyed.
“I think he kept all of this, all these women in there as trophies,” she told The Post.
“He would have some just named, you know, Monday, Wednesday, and it would be a naked woman. It’s disgusting.
“He had a sex book, a black book where he logged everybody he slept with.”
Crystal, a model and former Playboy Playmate, was 26 when she married Hefner in 2012. She remained his wife until his death in 2017 at age 91.
“I came from a broken home. I didn’t have a father,” she said. “Hef chose people he could easily manipulate.”
Her accounts of being pressured into sexecho allegations made over the past decade by other former Hefner girlfriends, including “Girls Next Door” stars Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt.
Crystal said Hefner built his Playboy empire by collecting women with “broken wings” before subjecting them to “humiliation ritual(s).”
Even his longtime secretary Mary recognized the pattern, according to Crystal.
“Mary told me that … Hef chooses the broken ones. He collects the ones with the broken wings,” she said.
“He should have been getting us all a therapist instead of a one-way ticket to his bedroom.”
Being married to Hef and living in the Playboy Mansion bore little resemblance to the image of a carefree pleasure palace presented to the public.
“It was like a humiliation ritual up there. And all orchestrated by this man,” said Crystal, who still struggles with understanding why she married Heffner.
“It’s something I think about every day. If I could go back … I absolutely wouldn’t have.”
On an Oct. 14 podcast episode of “Consider Before Consuming,” Crystal criticized Hefner for dating twin sisters while in a relationship with her, saying “the incest was okay for him” in reference to his involvement with the siblings.
She also alleged that Hefner treated women as sex conquests and had a particular interest in sleeping with both a Playmate and her daughter.
“It was kind of a game for him.”
Crystal also took aim at comedian Jon Lovitz, calling him “one of the biggest pervs” in Hollywood and claiming he was the Playboy Mansion’s “No. 1 customer,” during Tuesday’s episode of the “Lisa Guerrero Unleashed” podcast.
“He would be up there all the time,” she said.
“His eyes would go front to back [looking at] all the women that walked through the door at the party.”
Lovitz’s rep did not respond to Page Six’s request for comment. In a video obtained by Page Six, he joked that he took the “No. 1 customer” claim as a “compliment” and said that “Hugh Hefner was one of the nicest, most generous people.”
Hefner’s reputation took a major hit in 2015, when Holly Madison — one of the three original stars of E!’s “The Girls Next Door” — published her revealing memoir, “Down the Rabbit Hole.”
“I learned Hef was the manipulator,” she wrote. “He pitted us against one another.”
Hefner rejected her account, accusing some former partners of choosing to “rewrite history in an attempt to stay in the spotlight.”
Fellow “Girls Next Door” star Bridget Marquardt later described pressure surrounding her first sexual encounter with him.
“I was hoping that I could just observe and not participate,” she recalled on “Girls Next Level” in 2022.
Her assessment of her time with Hefner was nevertheless mixed: That same year, she said “98 percent” of her mansion experience was positive.
Kendra Wilkinson, the third original star,told People in 2024: “Playboy really messed my whole life up,” describing deep regret over her relationship with Hefner.
Hefner, however, insisted his lifestyle was authentic and described it as one of “tremendous satisfaction.”
“It doesn’t get better than this, and I know it,” he told CNN in a 2010 interview.
“What you see is the real deal. I mean, the life is essentially who I am.”
By the final years of his silk pajama-clad life, however, Hefner’s business was in decline.
Playboy’s circulation had fallen from roughly 5.6 million in 1975 to about 800,000 by 2015, ABC News reported. The magazine, which had featured sexy centerfolds and naked celebrities since its 1953 debut, dropped nudity from its pages in 2016.
It reversed course the following year.
The mansion sold for $100 million in 2016, half its original asking price, under a deal that allowed Hefner to keep living there until his death.
Inside, according to Crystal’s previous accounts, the glamour had given way to dust, mold and neglect. She described the property in 2024 as “rundown and gross.”
The widow has found common ground with one of Michael Jackson’s accusers over the pain of seeing their alleged abusers idolized, and the two share a therapist, she said.
“I thought how hard that must be to watch somebody that hurt you so bad be put on a pedestal and still revered and glamorized,” she said.
“I just hope that in 2026, we do not glamorize predators.”
She said her decision to speak out now about her marriage to Hefner was driven by concern for other women.
“You don’t have to be in the Playboy Mansion with Hugh Hefner to experience abuse,” she said.
“It happens everywhere every day.”
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