Hugh Hefner’s widow is seeking an investigation into personal effects she believes his foundation may be in possession of, including scrapbooks and diaries that may contain sensitive information, including explicit images of women and potentially underage girls. Crystal Hefner’s lawyer announced on Tuesday that they were filing two regulatory complaints in both California and Illinois against the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation. Hefner said that she believes the foundation has 3,000 of her late husband’s scrapbooks and diaries dating back decades. “The materials span decades beginning in the 1960s. And may include images of girls who were underage at the time and could not consent to how their images would be retained or controlled,” Hefner said. She added that the materials “may also contain images of women who did not consent to their images being taken in the first place.” Hefner is seeking an investigation into how the images are being handled and stored in an effort to prevent their potential distribution. Crystal, Hefner’s third wife, married the Playboy publisher in 2012, when she was 26 and he was 86. They remained married until his death at the age of 91 in 2017. In a joint statement to the Daily Beast, Hefner’s sons Marston and Cooper said they had extensively reviewed the materials—which document decades of personal, professional, and family history— as had numerous historians, filmmakers, and journalists. “We have never seen inappropriate images of minors,” the statement said. “We believe claims of this magnitude should be supported by evidence and precision, not implication without proof.” The statement said the family supported preserving the scrapbooks, which Hefner had intended to serve as a public record, in partnership with a museum or university.
Read it at CNN
