What is the legacy of Hugh Hefner? Infamous libertine and hedonist? Groundbreaking publisher and free-speech warrior? Culture changer, vampire, monster? All of the above?
Right off the bat in A&E's docuseries "Secrets of Playboy," one of Hefner's ex-girlfriends, Holly Madison, says the legacy dust isn't settled yet. He died in 2017 at age 91, escaping the #MeToo tornado of takedowns of other powerful Hollywood men.
Nevertheless, "Secrets of Playboy" comprises 10 hours of people talking about Hefner and the Playboy empire he created. And in none-too-flattering terms.
Scores of Hefner's girlfriends, friends, employees and colleagues explain how they chose to embrace the lifestyle he flaunted before America's many bluenoses, and how they eventually realized – too late – it was all a soul-destroying sham.
"What I want to say to Hefner is you destroyed a lot of lives," says PJ Masten, a former Playboy "bunny mother." "You were power-hungry. You didn't care about the lives of these women. It was all about what people perceived about you. And it was all a lie."
'Secrets of Playboy':Hugh Hefner's former girlfriends, Playmates and employees allege a culture of abuse
Some of Hefner's friends defend him in the series. "If you're not happy, pack up your stuff and go – you could have walked out the door anytime," says Hefner's photographer friend Alison Reynolds.
Hefner's son, Cooper, recently spoke out in support of his father on Twitter, saying that Hefner "cared deeply for people" and that the stories in the series are "salacious."
Playboy issued a statement noting that today's Playboy is not 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," Playboy said in the statement. "It is critically important that we listen."
Earlier this month, People magazine published an open letter signed by hundreds of former Playboy bunnies, Playmates, former girlfriends and employees denouncing "Secrets of Playboy" and the allegations it makes against Hefner.
"He was a person of upstanding character, exceptional kindness and dedication to free thought," the letter said. "Our time within Hugh Hefner's Playboy and the organization's subsidiaries remains a period all of us are fond of."
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A&E issued a statement to USA TODAY in response to the letter, arguing that the personal experiences of Hefner's accusers deserve to be told, "despite how difficult they may be for some to hear."
"Signatures on a letter, or a different experience with Mr. Hefner or the Playboy culture, do not negate the experiences of those who have come forward to share their truth on the series and we look forward to continuing to bring these stories to light."
A disclaimer after every episode notes that the "vast majority of allegations (against Hefner and associates) have not been subject to criminal investigations or charges, and they do not constitute guilt."
Six episodes of "Secrets of Playboy" have aired. Here are some of the most stunning claims so far:
Former Playmate Miki Garcia: I refused to sleep with Hugh Hefner, lost out as a Playmate of the Year
Episode 6 focuses on some of the women who worked their way up the Playboy corporate ladder and what they say they found there. Leading the chorus of critics is Garcia, one of the first Hispanic Playmates of the Month (Miss January 1973), who later became director of Playmate promotions.
Garcia says she learned her first business lesson from Hefner when she was up for the lucrative Playmate of the Year title. She was asked to go to the mansion to meet Hefner – and she knew what that meant: She was expected to have sex with him. Garcia tried to avoid the meeting until she was told "no more excuses" by Hefner lieutenants.
"I knew if I did not go to bed with him, I would not get Playmate of the Year," she says. The title went to another Playmate.
She also says she was raped twice during her time at Playboy, including by a famous TV actor she does not name.
The death of Dorothy Stratten, the 1980 Playmate of the Year who was 20 when she was shot to death by her estranged husband, was the "final straw," Garcia says.
So in October 1985, she appeared before a President Reagan-era federal commission on pornography to testify about what she called the "inside story" of Playboy, including allegations of rape, sexual abuse, violent crime, suicide and drug-peddling.
"Playboy was dangerous to women and I was going to stop it any way I could," she says.
Ex-girlfriend Sondra Theodore: I was manipulated into orgies, raped by Hefner's cronies
Episode 5 focuses entirely on Sondra Theodore's long list of allegations against Hefner, with whom she lived as his No. 1 girlfriend for five years from the late 1970s to early 1980s. Often weeping, she describes herself as a 19-year-old "sweet, angelic, naive" girl when she met Hefner (who was 50 at the time), fell "in love" with him and moved into the Playboy Mansion, only to discover later that she wasn't No. 1 and that she would be forced or manipulated into sexual acts.
"He broke me like you break a horse," she says. "He said I was the first girl he liked enough to consider to having a baby with – that was his way of being romantic. I was not worldly enough to see through it, (to see) that he had a wife and children and multiple girlfriends."
Theodore describes Hefner as a "monster" and a "vampire," alleging he dabbled in bestiality and liked watching "snuff" films.
She says Hefner would hire porn stars to come to his bedroom and have sex with women living at the mansion while he watched. He kept multiple sex toys in the headboard of the bed, according to his valet, Stefan Tetanbaum, who says the maids' job was to clean and sterilize them every morning, encase them in plastic and return them to the headboard.
But Theodore is most undone by Hefner's pestering her to "party," meaning organize and participate in orgies, which so upset her she consumed cocaine to block the emotional and physical pain. These group sex sessions in his bedroom, which his valet corroborates in the episode, could involve up to a dozen people, she says.
She says she felt she was being raped during these sessions. "I felt so violated having a man I did not want to be with force himself on me, and I felt sick inside that the man I felt was my boyfriend was OK with that."
Claim: Bobbie Arnstein killed herself because she didn't want to testify against Hefner
Bobbie Arnstein, Hefner's executive assistant, was found dead in a Chicago hotel room in January 1975 at age 34. Nearby was a suicide note defending Hefner as a "moral" man who had been "generous" during her "recent difficulties," according to the Chicago Reader.
Those difficulties included ensnarement in a drug trafficking investigation in which she was accused of being a drug mule for the Chicago Playboy Mansion under orders from Hefner. She was wiretapped, indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to 15 years in a federal prison. She overdosed a few months later.
At the time, Hefner angrily blamed her suicide on "harassment" by government prosecutors using her to get to him to shut down Playboy.
Theodore says in the series that drugs were all over Playboy, and Hefner was a regular user of cocaine, Quaaludes and other pills. She claims she was a drug mule for Hefner.
"If Sondra had come forward with this testimony at the time, it would have changed the investigation, and Bobbie Arnstein wouldn't have died because she didn’t want to testify against (Hefner)," says David Reuben, a former investigator for the Cook County state attorney's office who was involved in the trafficking case.
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Jennifer Saginor grew up in the Playboy Mansion as the daughter of Hefner's longtime live-in doctor, Mark Saginor. She published a memoir in 2005 about her experiences, "Playground: A Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion," which included being underage when she was introduced to sex, drugs and breast enhancement.
She says her father was Hefner's "best friend" for more than 40 years. "It’s my personal belief that the love of Hef’s life was my father,” she says.
Dr. Saginor gave up his practice to live with Hefner and brought his daughter with him. At age 15, Saginor says, she had a sexual affair with one of Hefner's adult girlfriends, which she says employees of the mansion knew about (one confirmed it on camera.)
Now living in California, Dr. Saginor was contacted by "Inside Edition" after the series' debut and rejected accusations he was nicknamed "Dr. Feelgood" for prescribing prescription pills to people at Playboy.
Former girlfriend Holly Madison calls Playboy 'a cult,' says sex with Hefner was 'traumatic'
Madison, one of Hefner's live-in lovers seen on E!'s “The Girls Next Door,” a reality show about the Playboy Mansion, says she contemplated suicide because of her time with him. She says Playboy reminded her of a "cult" and describes her first experience of sex with Hefner as "traumatic." She says she thought she was in love with Hefner, but "it was very Stockholm syndrome."
The pressure on the interchangeable girlfriends to look the same was intense. When Madison cut her long blond hair in an effort to look different, Hefner screamed at her, she says.
Playboy allegedly covered up sex crimes committed against bunnies by VIPs
Masten says she repeatedly warned her bunny charges not to to go to after-parties or go home with VIPs. "Once they left the club, they were not protected," she says.
Former Playboy bunnies, Playmates and other employees say that they knew of women who lived at the Playboy Mansion or worked at Playboy clubs who were drugged and raped by guests and members of Hefner's entourage off the property and that those assaults were hushed up and never reported to police, often at the victims' request.
Jaki Nett, a former Playboy bunny and bunny trainer from 1969 to 1979, says she and another bunny went to a party at the home of a Playboy VIP member, where they were drugged and raped.
"I didn't want to go to the police," she says. "The only thing Playboy could do is take his membership away. Playboy did protect and support me; what women need is to be believed and that's what happened to me."
Claim: Bunnies were lured from Playboy's Great Gorge resort to appear in a 'movie,' then raped, videotaped
Another horrifying incident allegedly involves the now-closed Great Gorge Playboy Club in New Jersey during Playboy's 25th anniversary.
According to Suzanne Charneski, a Playboy bunny from 1979 to 1982, a group of men pretending to be Hollywood producers visited the resort in 1979 and invited a group of bunnies to a house in the mountains nearby to possibly be filmed for their "movie."
"They were drugged, raped and videotaped, they were kept there for a couple of days and then released and told if they told anyone the videos would be broadcast," Charneski says.
When word got out, "they were fired, told to get off they property and never come back – no therapy, no doctor." She says she was warned "you could get fired if you talk about this."
A bunny kept her alleged encounter with Bill Cosby to herself because he was 'one of Hefner's best friends'
Bill Cosby is one of several celebrities accused of sexually assaulting women at the mansion. Although he has never been charged with that, he is now embroiled in a civil suit from a woman who accuses Cosby of sexual battery at the mansion in 1974 when she was 15. He denies her allegations.
Masten, another of the leading accusers in "Secrets of Playboy," is one of about 60 women who starting in 2014 accused Cosby of sexual assault. She says Cosby drugged and raped her in a Chicago hotel in 1979, when she was a Playboy bunny. She said she was told she'd better keep quiet because no one would believe her, because Cosby was one of Hefner's best friends. Cosby has denied her allegations.
"In the 10 years that I worked for Playboy, I would venture to say that there were probably 40 to 50 young women that were silenced by Playboy because of sexual abuse," she says. Hefner knew about these episodes, Masten says, because he read the daily security reports.
"The bunny costume made you feel powerful, but I realized you lost your power when you took off the costume – you didn’t have protection," she says.
Playboy's 'cleanup crews' claim they mopped up drugs, deaths and rapes
Masten and multiple former employees of the mansion claim Playboy had “cleanup crews” to make sure scandals such as overdoses, deaths and sexual assaults remained under wraps so they could not mar Playboy's image.
"If anything scandalous happened, we had to clean it up and make sure it wouldn’t get in the press or reported to police." Masten says. "We were not allowed to take women to the hospital; we had to call Playboy security."
Jim Ellis, who worked as Hefner's bodyguard from 1980 to 1981, also confirmed the existence of cleanup crews. "When I was first hired, (the head of security) sat me down and he says, 'If you ever talk to the media about anything that you see here, you're going to wish you hadn't,' " Ellis says.
Hidden cameras, microphones recorded sexual goings-on at the Playboy Mansion
Former employees and residents of the mansion claimed cameras and microphones were hidden everywhere to record people without their knowledge.
“Every room, even outside on the property, had cameras,” says Tetenbaum. In a video clip from decades ago, Hefner acknowledged he had cameras in the house.
Hefner had a cache of tapes and videos of orgies and drug consumption to use in case anyone threatened to squeal, according to Theodore and others.
“He lets the media into all these parties on purpose because usually they end up doing something they’ll regret,” Theodore says. “So down the road if anything is going to come out negative about him, he’d just say ‘I don’t think so – remember this?' ”
Hefner's girlfriends say they were forced to sign contracts
Madison and another Hefner ex, Bridget Marquardt, say they weren't paid for the first episodes of “The Girls Next Door” and were told they had to sign renewal contracts on short notice or E! would drop the show.
By this point, Madison felt as if she was signing a contract to be "in a relationship" with Hefner and the other women. She signed under duress, she says.
Marquardt describes how Hefner angrily cornered her in the shower, shouting at her to sign. Shaken, she did so. “Crying and soaking wet,” Marquardt says.
If you are a survivor of sexual assault, RAINN offers support through the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE and online.rainn.org).
If you or someone you know may be struggling with self-harm or suicidal thoughts, you can call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) any time day or night, or chat online.
