'The secrets of Playboy': the sophisticated network of sexual abuse of "a monster" named Hugh Hefner

Freedom of expression and sexual freedom were two of the mantras with which Hugh Hefner, a teenager with little skill with the opposite sex, created his successful character.

Alexandra Dean directs this documentary series divided into 10 chapters, in which she uncovers the shame of an elaborate

campaign that society was unable to question firmly enough.

The secrets of Playboy

is structured through the articulated (and confirmed by some of the ex-employees of the tycoon) testimonies of several of the women.

They suffered or witnessed the sexual and psychological abuse that served as the basis for an entire business empire.

It began with a magazine that emerged at the right time, fusing the sexist repression of the fifties with the songs of sexual liberation of the following decade.

Before long she was pushing exclusive nightclubs and vacation

where rape culture seemed to be part of the list of amenities offered to her powerful male clientele.

Everything was created in the image and likeness of what Hefner himself enjoyed inside his well-known and publicized home.

'The secrets of Playboy' collects in ten chapters testimonies of the abuses committed in the well-known Chicago mansion.AMC

The first to denounce in the series is Jennifer Saginor, daughter of Hefner's best friend and personal doctor.

After her parents divorced her when she was six years old, she grew up in that mansion that she understood as a family refuge.

The goddaughter of the businessman narrates how she was blurring before the eyes of her whom she considered a father figure.

He is succeeded in the story by Holly Madison, a young woman who had trouble connecting with people due to what she defines as an undiagnosed case of Asperger's, who, in the early 2000s, wanted to be part of the Playboy harem inspired by the fame of Jenny MCarthy, Pamela Anderson and Anna Nicole Smith.

Hefner, who bragged for much of his life to the media's approval of having half a dozen girlfriends at the same time,

he always kept one of them in a privileged position.

She achieved that position very soon after arriving at the mansion and held it for seven years.

In the documentary she details the skillful manipulation that the then seventy-year-old Hefner used with the twenty-somethings he surrounded himself with, to annul them, confront them and even clone them with each other, imposing an identical peroxide blonde on their hair.

Madison's memories parallel those of Sandra Theodore, who occupied that same spot more than 20 years earlier.

And they contrast with those of Hefner's friends, who blame Madison for being a victim.

Her appearance in the series defending the owner of Playboy and her lifestyle is a risky but effective decision;

the more they question the testimonies of the women who appear in it, the more they reinforce them.

Even more sordid is the installment detailing Hefner's propaganda and disinformation machine.

The tycoon had a "cleaning team" on staff in charge of erasing all the scandals surrounding the attacks suffered by his

the waitresses of his exclusive nightclubs, at the hands of his powerful male clientele.

When the machinery of the bunny

discovered that some of them had been drugged and raped, and even kidnapped for days, it was in charge of removing them from the world, without offering them legal or health protection, so that the scandal would not spread and their brand image would not would be devalued.

The aggressors, often television or movie stars, enjoyed total impunity and the victims were wiped off the map, say the testimonies of

.

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