Hugh Hefner called the FBI multiple times in 2005 to report Jeffrey Epstein for sexual abuse, according to new court filings.
Audra Lynn Christiansen, 46, the Playboy Playmate known as Miss October 2003, told the late magazine publisher she had been raped and trafficked by the disgraced financier while living at Hefner’s Beverly Hills mansion, prompting him to repeatedly contact the agency on her behalf. The revelations emerged in an amended complaint filed in May in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida by 32 Epstein victims who charge the FBI failed to act on multiple reports about his sexual abuse as early as 1996.
Christiansen, who appeared on the reality television series “The Girls Next Door,” asked Hefner to call the FBI in 2005 because she felt he had law enforcement connections and the “clout” to ensure her allegations were taken seriously. “Mr. Hefner called the FBI multiple times on behalf of Ms. Christiansen to report Jeffrey Epstein,” the complaint states. She was only contacted by the FBI in October 2020, after Epstein’s death, to follow up on the information provided 15 years earlier, according to the lawsuit.
In addition to the rape allegations, Christiansen said she confided in Hefner that she also was trafficked to one of his rich friends — Macau casino billionaire Stanley Ho, China’s “Godfather of gambling” who died in 2020, according to the filing. She told the FBI that her agents introduced her to Epstein, who wanted to meet her after the Playboy shoot came out, according to the 2020 FBI report of the call included in the court filing.
“The fact that the FBI is trying to utilize procedural technicalities to try to avert accountability and responsibility for its failures to properly investigate Jeffrey Epstein for over 20 years should be deeply concerning to all,” Jordan Merson, lawyer for the victims, said in a statement. “How can you learn from errors if you do not acknowledge them?”
The Minnesota-born former model wrote in the 2003 “Playmate data sheet” that accompanied her nude centerfold that her turn-on was “a secure older man who makes me laugh” and her turnoffs included “being taken for granted.” Hefner himself was accused of rape five years after his 2017 death in the damning “Secrets of Playboy” documentary, where women said he was a “predator” who was also into bestiality. The claims never made it to court and Hefner wasn’t accused of rape while he was alive.
In the files released last year by the Department of Justice, Ho is referred to as “the richest man in Hong Kong” in a 2011 email from Epstein to his friend Boris Nikolic, adding “owns most of Macau… The leader of the Chinese mob.” The FBI tried to get the lawsuit thrown out in June, saying it was “not required to investigate every complaint” it received. The case is still before the courts. The agency never publicly addressed Hefner’s tip.
In the viral moment that launched years of scrutiny over federal inaction, Epstein’s pattern of abuse first drew law enforcement attention in Palm Beach in 2005, when the stepmother of a 14-year-old girl reported that he had paid her for sex. That investigation eventually produced a sweetheart plea deal in 2008 that allowed Epstein to serve just 13 months in jail with work release privileges, avoiding federal charges at the time. The current lawsuit by 32 victims seeks to hold the FBI accountable for what they describe as decades of ignored warnings, including Hefner’s repeated calls and reports dating back to Maria Farmer’s 1996 complaint to the NYPD.
The amended filing was first reported by Julie Brown on Substack.