I think everybody had a little bit of a wish
or a desire to be a Playboy Bunny.
The first Playboy Club was founded in 1960.
The club is really an extension of the concept
that was developed in the magazine.
Relaxed, urban living. Good food and drink.
Pretty girls. Good entertainment.
We were a glorified waitress with the fuzzy tail.
There was a style that the Playboy Bunnies d.
So you could be pretty, sexual, coy,
sweet, sexy, but not naked.
The Bunnies were
the greatest sex symbol in the country.
The Playboy Club became a worldwide sensation.
The Bunny became probably more famous
than the Playmates in the magazine.
You felt very powerful being a Bunny
because you thought you were protected by Playboy,
but that costume was a liability,
because when men were viewing it,
they assumed that you were sexually open to them.
And when you took that costume off, they still saw a female,
and they still saw in their eyes,
you know, that costume.
There were a group of Bunnies
who were abducted, drugged,
and used in a sex movie.
But it was almost like, "Don't talk about this."
Celebrities in Hollywood-- they had carte blanche.
They could do whatever they wanted.
Can you confirm the existence of a cleanup crew?
Oh, yeah. That's absolutely true.
And that was an open invitation
for sexual power.
♪ ♪
My name is Hugh Hefner.
I'm editor-publisher of "Playboy" magazine.
Hugh Hefner was just 27.
He fashioned himself and Playboy
as the face of sexual liberation.
Playboy is one of the most famous brand names
in the world.
I would like to be remembered
as somebody who played some positive part
in changing the social sexual values of my time.
♪
I believe that Hef pulled one over
on the whole world.
The fantasy of Playboy that he created did not allow
for the consent of the women.
When it came to Hefner's buddies,
u had to keep those secrets quiet.
What have you got for free?
When you get someone that powerful,
anything could happen. Anything.
The people who were really there--
they're the ones who know the real truth.
I want to be a voice
for the women that suffed the most at his hands.
♪
I have a lot of boxes packed because I'm moving.
Let me go and see if I can dig out some stuff,
because I have a lot of Playboy memorabilia.
Let's see what we have here.
♪ ♪
I was a Bunny in '72, and I was 22 yea old.
What's this one here?
♪
Oh, my goodness.
I have all these t-shirts from Playboy.
Reunion. This is the uniform we wore
when we didcharity games for children.
And we had black shorts with that.
And of course, Bunny Lib. We fought for that.
♪
Before I worked at Playboy Club,
I was in a very abusive marriage,
and I fl.
And I had come up to see my folks in Jersey.
And I was in my dad's--in the office typing something,
and the guys in the office-- they said,
"PJ, why don't you go get an interview as a Bunny?"
And I said, "I'm a medal and surgical assistant.
"I wear white uniforms.
"How could I put a costume on like that?
There's no way."
"We'll bet you $100 you won't go up there for an interview."
♪
I figured, "100 bucks?" I needed the money.
So my mother encouraged me,
because she knew that I was very depressed,
and she knew I had no self-confidence.
So my mom and dadrove me to Great Gorge, New Jersey,
and I went for the interview, and I had braces on my teeth.
I put the bathing suit on.
The Bunny Mother said to me,
"Lose 10 pounds, take the braces off your teeth,
and you start a week from Monday."
So that's how it started.
♪
When you put on that costume,
you thought you could kill the world.
Looking back at my headshot,
you can see how confident I felt.
u were just magnificent and powerful.
And you were, yes, a sex symbol.
♪
So the first Playboy Club opened in 1960.
Hugh Hefner was very much
a part of the pop culture zeitgeist.
Why did you put the girls in those costumes?
Well, the girls wore Bunny costumes
because the Bunny was our corporate logo.
At the very beginning, I selected a rabbit symbol
to represent the magazin
The rabbit had a certain sort of sexy reputation.
And I made some modifications,
added the cuffs and the bow tie and collar,
and the Bunny was born.
Playboy Clubs wereall very sophiicated.
It was the place to be.
And you literally needed a real key to get in the door.
$25 got you a key membership.
It was prestigious to have a Playboy key card.
Hugh Hefner--he made a big deal about it.
Starting as of the first of the year,
there will be keysvery much like this
in the hands of members throughout the country.
♪
In true rabbit fashion,
that one club multiplied to 22 befor1970.
By 1972, there were one million keyholders.
Well, I remeer the rule that when you went
to the Playboy Club,you couldn't date the Bunnies
or you couldn't touch the Bunnies or anything.
Who made up that rule?
Well, it was mine, I'm afraid.
If we're all supposed to, you know, be released
from our taboos and hang-ups,
why can't we go in and touch the Bunnies?
Because ife had allowed,
in those days, anything else,
we wouldn't have had any Playboy Clubs,
'cause we had liquor licenses on the line,
and all we were saying, very simply, was,
"Separate business from pleasure."
Nobody's allowed to touch the Bunnies.
It's in the manuals. It's in the books.
Everybody knew that.
If a keyholder touched you
and you went and told your room director,
his key was tan away,
and he was thrown out of the club.
And so it was wonderful, because you felt
like you were a celebrity, you were a show girl.
It was an opportunity for self-esteem
for a lot of these girls.
♪
I went to the Playboy Club on 59th Street in New York.
And that was like, "Whoa."
You know, it was a big deal.
300, 400 girls would go
tory out for maybe five spots.
I really didn't feel that I was a pretty girl.
I just didn't believe I had what it took.
♪ ♪
I had a very difficult childhood.
I was in a shelter at 16 years old and ran away.
I had severe acne.
My teeth re rotted out of my mouth.
♪
There was a lot of bullying,
a lot of, "You're ugly.
Who would ever wanna be with you?"
It was really very difficult.
♪ ♪
I still didn't feel pretty, you know,
because the ugly on the inside doesn't go away.
♪
So I take my bikini bathing suit
and my super high heels,
and I go for the interview.
And she says to me, "You saw your competition out there.
Why should we hireou?" And I looked at her.
I said, "I don't have any competition."
Well, I got the job.
Look at this picture.
It really was a transformation.
I actually started liking myself more and more
by being a Bunny.
I liked the way I looked.
I liked the way others looked at me.
I was treated differently.
Roseanne, why do you want to be a Bunny?
I'm missing out on a lot of things.
And there's much more in life
than just being a itress in a restaurant.
And I could meet a lot of interesting people
and really do a lot more things.
♪
I have cuffs, and I have lighters.
And I have the original matches.
I was hirefor the opening of the 1973 Club
in Los Angeles in Century City.
♪
I'm not sure it'll be straight,
but I can do it without a mirror.
♪
In America back then, for women,
you were either going to become a schoolteacher,
or you were goa become a nurse.
And that was pretty much it.
I personally wanted to be a veterinarian,
but my high school counselor looked at me, and she said,
"Ladies don't become veterinarians."
She said, "You're just gonna get married and have children,
and you will take ca of your husband's home."
And I was so stunned, 'cause it took away
what I wanted passionately mo than anything
in the whole wide world. It's all I ever wanted.
I still think about it every day.
These are pictures from when I was hired.
I looked maybe like a pretty girl next door.
If I had hadn't had the job at Playboy,
I really don't know what would've happened.
Playboy gave me a lot of confidence,
and I think some of the other girls felt the same way.
This is a picture of me
on my first night as a Playboy Bunny.
My first job.
was cigar, cigarette, and camera girl.
I was actually the third Black Bunny
to be hired at the LA Cl.
Hef was very much for integration.
It was liberating, because I did come
from a very puritanical Southern Baptist life.
I had to go to church, and I had the PO box hat.
And I sat like this.
You had to sit with the legs crossed like so.
♪
So when I was a Bunny,
I was able to have my sexuality and bekay with it.
Before I decided to become a Playboy Bunny,
I was on my own, a single mother, a student.
So I had tuition, a baby to raise.
The salary offer was so much more
than what I was making with St. John's Hospital
that it just couldn't touch it,
so of course I jumped on it.
I didn't realize that until years later,
it wasn't really all about beauty,
because they could make us betiful, and they did.
♪
It was innocence.
We knew nothing about anything in the world.
♪
And I can't explain it to you
or to anybody else.
When you worked for Playboy,
you never really felt anything was gonna go wrong.
And you just took it for granted that you're protected.
♪
There were things that happened.
♪
Everything wasn't lights, camera, action, happy.
It's a juxtaposition when I think
how ayboy changed my life for the better,
and how Playboy destroyed someone else's life forever.
Let's picture a gal that looks like Elizabeth Taylor,
age 21. Gorgeous.
Stunning. She's at a cocktail party,
and you're gonna be taken over to be introduced to her.
And you expect someone that has everything going for her,
who's that beautiful, to be rather aloof and say,
"Oh, yes, awfully nice to meet you,"
and back to r conversation.
And let's say, as you're being brought over
to be introduced to her, suddenly she turns to you,
has this big grin, looks right in the eye,
ansays, "Hi, my name is Betty."
That's the kindof disarming experience
that we want to happen evy time
a Bunny comes up to a table.
♪
Playboy allowed men to indulge in the fantasy
of what their life might look like if they were wealthy.
It's these beautiful, extremely young, buxom women,
that, in the role of Bunny,
somehow seem like they're primed for service.
The perception of what a Bunny is
glamor.
It wasn't for everybody.
You went through basic training,
and it was grueling.
My arms would be black and blue all the time
just trying to negotiate the tray in your hand
to not knock it over left or right.
♪
matter where you were,
had to know every drink
and the call letters of every drink, and what went in.
If you didn't call your drinks in properly,
you know what happened to you?
Boom. They knocked your tray down,
and you had to start all over and go in the back of the line.
Scotch. Canadian. Bourn. Blended.
Rye. Irish. Gin. Vodka.
Rum. Tequila.
Mix, blended, cream, beer, wine, exotic drinks,
and Irish coffee.
Now, when she places this one, you notice
that she is doing what we call a Bunny Dip.
There you notice that she's bending at the waist.
That's incorrect.
The Bunny Dip was a very difficult thing to do
You stood all the time with your tray.
And then when you served a cocktail,
your tray was in the left hand,
and you would come back and serve.
The Bunny image was the Playboy girl next door.
And in that Bunny image, she didn't drink.
She didn't smoke. She didn't swear.
She didn't date.
She wasn't really a real person, so to speak.
It was an image.
Bunny image was everything.
That's what Hefner built the clubs on.
I don't think Hefner meant it to be sexist,
but he had an ime that he was trying to sustain.
The ladies were very youthful,
because that was our job to stay that way.
You know, I'm still a Bunny.
I will be a Bunny till I die,
which I don't plan to die until I'm 102.
♪ ♪
You had a complete check before you went into svice.
Before you went on the floor,
you were checked
for your costume, the way it looked,
the way it fit, and your weight.
If you gained weight,
you were gonna have a really bad problem,
'cause they weren't gonna let that costume out for you.
Tell me how you felt the first time
you put that costume on,how it felt.
Well, the first time you ever wear a girdle
that's maybe a size smaller than you are,
it's not exactly comfortable,
but you get used to it just like anything else.
The stume has metal stays in it.
So it took two people to put it on.
She would have to hold it in the front
and someone would zip it up the back.
And if you gained five pounds,
those 18 metal stays--
you couldn't breathe, lirally.
A lot of girls had kiey infections,
'cause you were cinched in.
We used to go into the ladies' room
and take our shoes off,
which were encrusted with blood,
and stick them in the toilet bo
and keep flushing it.
It was like a whirlpool to get the swelling down,
and hope that your shoes could fit back in.
Once a month, we got weighed in.
And there was a char in the Bunny Room
next to the scale,
and it was humiliating.
♪
I think that was part of it to humiliate these girls,
Everybody could see it.
And if you were five pounds over, you had a warning.
If you didn't get it down for next month,
you re suspeed until you got your weight down.
Good evening, sir. I'm your Bunny attending.
I'll be serving you tonight.
♪
Bunnies aren't born.
They're trained, carefully, by a Bunny Mother,
usually a former Bunny.
This is Training Bunny Leslie.
Hey.
♪
I became a Bunny Mother in 1975, I guess it was.
I was working as a Bunny in Great Gorge.
And I went down a whole flight of concrete stairs,
and I broke my back.
♪ ♪
And when I was ready to go back to work,
I couldn't do a Bunny Dip,
so I transferred
to the New York Club
as the assistant Bunny Mother.
And that's how I came into management.
We had to evaluate them on their appearance.
And we had guideline that all Bunny Mothers were given.
Crepey skin. Sagging breasts.
Bags under their eyes.
Crooked teeth.
Some really nasty descriptio,
and it was heartbreaking to me, and I just--I couldn't do it.
I couldn't do it. I rebelled against it.
I didn't check off if they had crepey skin
or if they had saggy breasts.
You couldn't tell anyhow.
I didn't wanna fire somebody for image.
That stays with you for the rest of your life.
That's a terrible thing.
♪ ♪
Sitting here in 2021,
I can see where many people would've thought
that this was not how to treat wen by saying,
"Well, if your image changes, you're outta here."
And I understand it.
But at the time, the way we were raised
and the times that we were raised in,
we didn't think anything about it
because we didn't know any different.
♪
And that's kind of sad.
♪
Hefner created illusion,
and it was very important to him.
♪
And that costume was very powerful.
Very powerful.
Sex. Nymph.
♪
"Sexual nymph" sells.
Think about it.
Everybody knew what that costummet.
We were probably
some othe most protected women on the planet,
but outside of Playboy is completely different.
So I was lucky.
But with Jaki, I was shocked
that something bad happened to her.
It's been over 4years
since I le Playboy,
and in my yoga, I'm still dealing with the way
my body had to form to carry out the function.
♪
The Bunny serve was quite beautiful.
It w like a show.
♪
There's only one time that I felt
like I was gonna put my tray down
and co to fisticuffs.
♪
I had a very traumatic experience with a man.
♪
It wasn't on a Playboy property at all.
♪
I went to this party with a Bunny.
♪
I was drugged and raped.
♪ ♪
I would pass out and wake up, and there was somebody else.
♪
But the only person I do remember--
he was a regular member at the club.
♪
I think, because of my early life,
I have this ability to compartmentalize...
♪
Because, in the segregated world,
you had to keep doing.
Things happen.
You'd fight for yourself.
♪
When I went back to work, I told everybody,
management down, wh had happened,
and that I know it was him.
One day and he came into the club,
and I was in the back, setting up my tray.
♪
And I picked up one of the stem glasses,
and I broke it.
And I came charging into the room,
and the room director caught me swinging at this guy
and kicking and screaming.
And ey dragged me out,
and they threw him out of the club.
♪
I mean, I would've been in jl,
because I uld've killed him
and had no problems with it.
No problems.
Because probably I'm not the only one
that he would do that to.
♪
People ask me, why didn't I go to the police,
which--I didn't to the police.
But during that time, as in now,
the female is made the victim.
♪ ♪
And so I didn't wanna go through that.
♪ ♪
Because it wasn't on Playboy property,
the only thinghey could do is take his membship away,
and he could not come into the club again.
♪
Playboy, for me, did protect me, did support me,
and in that type of situation,
what the female need is to be believ and supported.
And that's what happened with me.
♪
I've read your code of behavior for the Bunnies.
And as I understand it,
they're not permitted to go home with patrons
even after they are off duty. Is that correct?
All of this requires--and really the motivation behind it
is really a protection for the girls themselves.
You can't live under a false security blanket.
- As women, we do. - We protect ourselves.
♪
Outside of Playboy,
you have to be more vigilant
about what's going on around you.
♪
My name is Jim Ellis, and I was a member
of Hugh Hefner's executive protection team
during 1980 and 1981.
The Playboy Club--you know, they had the Bunnies.
These girls-- I mean, they're vulnerable.
They don't have personal security
that's escorting them 24/7.
Maybe within the club, you couldn't touch a girl,
but after hours, Bunnies-- they were not protected.
From what I know and what I've been told,
there were many young women
that were assaulted after hours.
Girls were parked outside on the streets
or in a parking lot.
And I was fearful that they would be attacked,
because there were keyholders
that would follow them out to the cars,
and they were carrying cash.
So I asked the general manager if he could have the busboys
or the bartenders walk the ladies out to their cars
after a late-hour shift,
and he absolutely refused.
"They're big girls.
They can take care of themselves."
That's what he told me.
♪
But once they left the club,
they were not protected,
especially from the VIPs
that were chosen by Hefner
that had carte blanche.
Let's see what elsewe got here.
Okay.
This was one of the first tal cards from Playboy.
This was a VIP card.
If a member came in
and showed the Bunny this card,
they knew that they were super-duper VIP,
and that they needed to be taken care of very well.
♪
There were mixed messages being a Bunny.
The rules were different with VIPs and keyholders.
♪
As a Bunny, you weren't allowed
to give your last name out.
You weren't allowed to go out with a keyholder.
However, there was a double standard.
A VIP celebrity, you were encouraged to mingle with,
you were encouraged to have fun with.
If I knew there was a big VIP party,
I would roll my eyes,
and I would have a conversation with the Bunnies.
"Don't go home with them. Don't take any phone numbers.
on't listen to their lines.
"They'll all coerce you into going to a party.
Don't do it.
Trust me when I tell you, don't do it."
The number one keyholders
were advertising executives for Playboy.
But it was mostly celebrities,
musicians, directors, producers in Hollywood.
They had carte blanche.
The men we associated with were all VIPs.
They were all celebrities.
Don Cornelius of "Soul Train" came in a few times.
And this was when the dio era hit big.
He became extremely popular in the '80
Everybody loved Don.
He was a presence, a big presence.
Regis Philbin was a regular in the cabaret room.
Martin Sheen was another one.
Anybody who was who.
Oh, yeah. All the time.
We were very lax when it came to that.
♪ ♪
They could date them.
They could party with them.
They could have dinner with them.
They could go out with them.
They could do whatever they wanted.
We had to entertn them. We had to take care of them.
We never took money from them. They never had a bill.
They never were presented a check.
Whatever they wanted, they could get.
There was a terrible thing that happened
at the Great Gorge Resort
with some guys that were pretending to be VIPs.
♪ ♪
The Great Gorge Resort--
it was really
an entertainment mecca for Playboy.
And it was one of a kind. It really was.
Hefner promoted Great Gorge
as the ultimate Playboy lifestyle experience.
♪
At Gre Gorge, there was an undercurrent of something
that you couldn't put your finr on,
but you knew something happened
that nobody was supposed to talk about.
They were very protective.
There was a gate all the way around the Bunny dorms.
You couldn't get in there if you didn't belong there.
Bunnies did not go to the bathroom
in the public bathrooms.
You had to go downstairs, back to the hutch.
You would be fired immediately
if you went into the hotel side of the resort.
I was complaining one day in the hutch
about being so overwhelmingly controlled,
and my mentor at the Playboy Club--
her name was Lynn--
and she said"Well, there's a reason for that."
♪
Well, I had no idea how good of a reason it was.
♪
About a year or so before I got there,
there were a group of girls who were approached
by some men who came into the resort
and told them they were big Hollywood producers.
And they wanted them to be in a movie.
And the girls agreed to meet with these men
outside of the Playboy compound to do this movie.
♪
"Here's an address,
"bring a bunch of girls with you,
"and come up to this A-frame
up in the mountains in McAfee."
♪
Some of the girls told other gls.
They all went, thinking that they were going to be
in a Hollywood production.
The girls went up there, and they were drugged.
♪
And they were raped,
and they videotaped them.
♪
And they were kept there for a couple of days.
♪
They were told, if they told anybody,
that the videos would go out and broadcast the videos,
and that their careers would be over,
and their lives would be over.
They were afraid to tell Playboy what had happened.
However, it got out, because the girls talk to each other.
It was so unbelievable that somethi like that
would happen in a tiny little town
called Great Gorge, NeJersey.
It rocked Playboy's world.
♪
It was not a time that they would want such a scandal,
because this washe 25th anniversary of Playboy.
So all these girls were fired.
They were told to get off the property
and never come back.
They were newbies,
so they didn't have Bunny friends.
They didn't have the senior Bunnies.
They were never offered therapy.
They never went to a doctor. They never had any help.
These are your employees. You're not going to help them?
♪
My understanding is,
they investigated what happened.
The gu were caught and arrested.
And Playboy corporate descended on Great Gorge
and did whatever Playboy had to do at that time
to minimize the result of such a horrible situation
happening at one of their clubs.
I think Playboy, athat time,
was extremely powerful.
And many of the girls never knew that that had transpired.
It was almost like, "Don't talk about this.
We're not allowed talk aut this."
You could get fired for talking about it.
We were not allowed to talk about it,
and when you have your Bunny meeting
with all the girls,
you are to tell them
to silence themselves.
- Not to bring it up. - Not to talk abouit.
I think about those girls.
They went into it with naivete and with fun and excitement.
And then to be muffled, discarded,
like it didn't matter?
♪ ♪
And you would think that Playboy mht want
to help young ladies
by pparing them for something like that,
but that didn't happen,
because the image of the Playboy Bunny
had to remn sterling silver.
There were girls that were silenced after being raped
in parng lots outside the clubs.
And they would go to their Bunny Mothers
and tell the Bunny Mothers, and some wouldn't.
It was a lucrative job.
They were afraid to come forward with a VIP assault.
They would lose their job,
because that's how it worked with Playboy.
You open your mouth, you're outta here.
And there was a constant turnover
of Bunnies, constant.
In the 10 years that I wked for Playboy,
I would venture to say that there were probably
40 to 50 young women that were silenced by Playboy
because of abuse, sexual abuse.
I was dating Joe Piastro, who was the head of security.
And we were part of the cleanup crew.
In other words, if anything scandalo happened,
we had to clean it up so it wouldn't hit the press
and it certainly wouldn't go to the police department.
And there were scandals in every club.
You weren't allowed to take them to a hospital.
You had to call Playboy security,
and Playboy security had to handle everything.
That was the cleanup crew.
It was a big thing, for Hefner,
to not have that kind ofeat.
He did not want the LAPD coming down on him.
He had a lot of protection within that force.
And the security there were ex-LAPD officers.
Neil Spots came onboard
as the West Coast manager of security.
And Neil was a retired LAPD intelligence detective.
Neil was a key player within the intelligence division.
So there's no question at Neil Spot
had his fingers in a lot of pies.
And so if there was anybody that had the power
to make something go away,
that would be Neil.
♪ ♪
I worked for Playboy,
and I protected the brand.
If a girl had committed an indiscretion
or if she got in trouble,
I would nimize it.
I did damage control.
Miki Garcia says that she was
part of a cleanup crew
at Playboy. - Mm-hmm.
Can you confirm the existence of a cleanup crew?
Oh, yeah.
That's absolutely true.
She was totally involved in that.
♪
It was a fairly well-kept secret.
When I was first hired,
Joe Piastro sat me down, and he says,
"If you ever go to the 'National Enquirer,'
"if you ever talk to t media
"about anything that you see here,
you're going to wish you hadn't."
♪
And that was part of the deal at Playboy, you know.
♪
You're expected to protect Playboy.
You know, someone would catch wind of it.
But hey, if she's saying stuff to--'re concerned
that she might go to the media,
and that's where the cleanup crew came in.
♪ ♪
If you were at the Mansion,
you were encouraged to talk and enga with VIPs.
That was the whole point of being up there.
We were all told, "Yeah, go talk to this one.
Go hang out with this one."
There were situations where Bunnies would go up
to the Mansion whether they were drun
cursing, drugged up,
having sex in the bushes with VIPs.
We had to cleathem up, straighten them out,
and the Playboy limo would take them home.
♪ ♪
My name is Russell Miller, and I wrote
"The Real Story of Playboy" in 1984.
At the time I was doing the book,
I probably interviewed between 15 and 20 ex-Bunnies.
The Bunnies that I talked to all told
more or less the same story.
♪ ♪
It was an experience they wouldn't want to repeat.
You know, Hefner often wanted
to have anal intercourse with them.
A lot of them hadn't had that experience before,
and didn't like it,
and felt somehow that they weren't sort of good enough
for even a cuddle,
but it was just this mechanical act,
which was unpleasant and painful.
A lot of the women were sodomized,
because they didn't want to get them pregnant.
When the men finished off, they just left them.
Dropped them off. Left them.
♪
No woman deserves to be treated
like a piece of meat.
You're supposed to protect these girls.
I was angry. I couldn't believe it.
♪
The culture of Playboy was fun and games,
and they could do whatever they wanted to do.
Bunnies were easy prey.
♪
Yeah, there was--there was a really bad thing
that happened with two of these young Bunnies
and a major VIP keyholder.
And this story was a story of a massive cleanup
that never hit the press.
It was probably the most horrific story
I've ever heard in Playboy.
Two of my baby Bunnies-- and I call them baby Bunnies
'cause they were 20 and 21 years old
or 21 and 22 years old.
They were sisters,
and I hired them on the spot
'cause they were absolutely adorable.
They just got done training,
and they were excited to be
in California and to Hollywood.
And theyent to Carlos 'N Charlie's,
which was the place that everybody went to
to dance and to have fun.
Don Cornelius, who was well known for being
the host of "Soul Train,"
was there in the VIP area.
♪ ♪
And welcome aboard.
I can guarantee you'll enjoy the ride.
Don Cornelius was a Playboy VIP gold member.
And he iited the baby Bunnies
to sit in his booth
and had drinks with them.
And then he invited them to go back to his house,
'cause he was going to have a party.
And they decided to go to the party,
thinking it was just a party.
And it was encouraged to take care of the big VIPs.
And Don Cornelius--
he had been in the club many times,
many people saw him,
so they di't have any fear at the time.
And these two young girls got in his Rolls Royce
and went up to his house.
And we didn't hear from em for three days
and couldn't figure out where they were.
These two young Bunnies re at Don Cornelius' house,
and they were separate
One was locked in one room,
and the other was in another room,
tied up and bound.
Anthe sister could hear her screaming.
And there were wooden objects that she was sodomized with.
And she could hear her other sister being brutalized.
It was horrible. Horrible.
One of the girls managed to get out
and make a phone call
to the Bun Mother at the time.
And as Playboy rules were, you uldn't call the police.
You call the Mansion and Joe Piastro.
And they went and got the Bunnies
bloody, battered, drugged.
And that's when Playboy security takes over.
♪
The Bunny Mother at the time
was my assistant before I moved to Chicago,
and she was part of the cleanup crew,
and she had to clean up these girls.
She wasn't allowed to take them to a hospital.
She had to take care of these young women
and to keep it out of the press.
And I think Hefner knew all about this.
Because Joe Piastro told me he had to do a report
every single day if anything happened.
And Hefner read the security reports.
Security there was not about making sure
these girls were safe.
It was about making sure
that the guests didn't do anything
that Hefner would not have wanted them to do,
the same way if you go to a nightclub,
the security guards there are not there
to make sure that you get home intact.
They're there to make sure at the club remains intact,
at this property is intact.
Why would we believe that the safety
and the security of these women we a priority
when we have so much evidence to the contrary?
I blame myself a lot.
I have such guilt about not coming forward,
but I knew that the establishment
wouldn't allow me toome forward.
And who's going to believe me? Nobody's going to believe me.
These girls didn't want to come forward.
I asked them.
For these young girls, what they went through,
you--nobody has any idea.
My job was to pick up the pieces.
I had to pick up the pieces of these kids.
They were kids.
Hefner definitely knew.
Knew all the time. He knew.
Hugh Hefner, are you a moral person?
Well, that is a part of my life
which is particularly important to me.
So many of my dreams ha come true,
and with it, obviously, has come wealth and celebrity
and a great deal of power.
And it is in a situation like that
when you really begin to find out who you are as a person
and you begin to really find out
what your moralityis really all about.
And one of thehings that is most important to me
is the way that I handle that.
♪
I feel very bad that I had to keep my mouth closed
when I wanteto cuddle these girls and take them home
and get them some therap
and get them some medical care,
not just ship them off like they were trash.
The thing that was so outrageous to me,
that made meo angry, is that no charges were filed,
and Don Cornelius' privileges as a number one VIP
was never suspended.
He was back in the club the following week.
Back in the club the following week.
I think a moral person is one who approaches his life
or her life in a way that itas a positive influence,
before you were there.
I'm the most moral millionaire that I've ever known.
♪
As a Bunny, you felt powerful,
you felt glamorous, you felt attractive,
could be a liability
when you took it off.
You lost your power without the costume.
Didn't have protection.
I heard the rumors that you could get
whatever you wanted in the Mansion.
If you wanted marijuana, you could get it.
If you wanted cocaine, you could get it.
Playboy was a natural target for law enforcement.
Bobbie Arnstein was arrested outside the Playboy Mansion.
And she was accused of conspiracy
to distribute cocaine.
All they wanted her for was to flip on Hef.
Narcotics agents frequently use our severe drug laws
in an arbitrary and capricious manner
to elicit the desired testimony for a trial.
The feds suspected that both Bobbie Arnstein
and my sister, Adrienne,
were involved in trafficking drugs for Playboy.