'Predator' Hugh Hefner Had A Taste For Bestiality, Docu Alleges; Ex-Playboy Bunnies Come To Icon's Defense

The late Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has been accused in a new documentary out on Monday, Jan. 24, by former workers and Playmates from the Playboy mansion of sexually abusive behavior during his decades-long tenure as head of the Playboy Mansion, describing the man as a predator in disguise.

Among the things Hefner was being accused of doing in the A&E documentary "Secrets of Playboy" is fashioning an environment where he held power over a lot of women and used it to abuse, dominate, and rape many of them who worked in the Mansion over the years, the NZ Herald reported.

“It was cult-like. The women had been groomed and led to believe they were part of this family,” Miki Garcia, the former director of Playboy promotions, said. “[Hefner] really did believe he owned these women. We had Playmates that overdosed, that committed suicide.”

He reportedly ordered women to have orgies with random men on a weekly basis and used drugs like cocaine and Quaaludes to make women submit easier to his sexual appetite, which grew even more and more warped the more time passed, according to the New York Post.

“He groomed me and twisted my mind into thinking his way was normal,” ex-girlfriend Sondra Theodore said. “He introduced me to drugs. I’d never had a drink or a drug before going up to the Playboy Mansion. And my first night there I was handed champagne and the drugs came later, and I was underage.”

"He was a predator," she said, describing Hefner. "I watched him, I watched his game. And I watched a lot of girls go through [the Playboy Mansion] gates looking farm-fresh, and leaving looking tired and haggard."

Hefner reportedly had an interest in snuff films and bestiality that may have occurred as he looked for stronger thrills to placate his sexual desires, with Theodore recounting a time when he was reportedly doing different sexual activities to a dog.

“I walked in on him with my dog and I said, ‘What are you doing?’ I was shocked,” she said. “He made it seem like it was just a one-time thing, and that he was just goofing off. But I never left him alone with my dog again.”

Alexandra Dean, who directed the documentary and interviewed all the victims, said that she was shocked with what she heard from the victims, which made her re-evaluate the documentary’s tone due to the seriousness of the accounts.

“Our ideas of emancipated womanhood, sexuality, and sexual freedom are all wrapped up with Playboy. But is a man like Hugh Hefner fit to define that?” she said.