Crystal Harris, the widow of Playboy Magazine founder Hugh Hefner, has filed a legal complaint seeking the whereabouts of her late husband’s personal collection of scrapbooks.
Harris held a press conference alongside celebrity feminist attorney Gloria Allred to address the matter publicly. The U.K.’s Daily Mail reported on the press conference Tuesday.
The collection in question consists of approximately 3,000 scrapbooks that Harris believes may contain sexually explicit photographs of underage girls.
Harris was careful to distinguish the nature of the materials from content that appeared in Playboy’s published magazines. “It is critical for the public to understand that I am not referring to images that appeared in magazines,” Harris said at the press conference.
“My focus is on how Hugh Hefner’s personal scrapbooks chronicle private moments that took place behind closed doors,” Harris said.
Harris stated that some of the women depicted in the images may have been intoxicated at the time the photographs were taken. “There are serious and unresolved concerns about the scope of what these books contain,” Harris said.
“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.”
Harris further described the graphic nature of the alleged materials. “They may also contain images of women who did not consent to their images being taken in the first place.
“The scrapbooks include nude images, images taken before and after sexual activity, and other deeply intimate moments.”
“This is not historical documentation. This is the cataloging and objectification of women’s most private details,” Harris said.
Regarding the current location of the scrapbooks, Harris indicated that she had received conflicting information.
She stated she was told some photographs “could be inside a private residence to be scanned and digitized,” while others are reportedly being held in a storage facility somewhere in California.
Harris expressed serious concern over the potential for the images to be distributed digitally.
“I am deeply worried about these images getting out. Artificial intelligence, deepfakes, digital scanning, online marketplaces, and data breaches mean that once images leave secure custody, the harm is irreversible. A single security failure could devastate thousands of lives,” she said.
Harris stated that financial gain is not among her motivations.
“This is not about money. I am seeking dignity, safety, and the destruction of non-consensual intimate materials so that exploitation does not continue under the banner of philanthropy. Thousands of women may be affected,” she said.
Harris published a memoir in 2024 titled “Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy And Finding Myself,” in which she claims she never loved Hefner and describes feeling like his prisoner, according to the Daily Mail.
Hugh Hefner founded Playboy Magazine and built it into a globally recognized brand before his death in 2017. Research published and reported by Science.org indicates that divorce rates double in relationships where pornography use is present.
A study cited by Fox News in 2023 found that the average age of first-time pornography exposure among users is 12 years old, with 15 percent of respondents reporting they had been exposed by age 10 or younger.
