THE Playboy empire comes under fire in a thinly veiled memoir to be published later this month in Citizen Culture magazine. Divini Rae Sorenson, Playmate of November 2003, writes of mandatory orgies, drugging, molestation and other sordid details of life at a Playboy Mansion-like sin palace.
“The Golden Cage: A Cautionary Tale” is a fictionalized account of her character’s experience at the “Toys for Boys Palace.” The creator of “Toys,” a Hugh Hefner-like Charles “Charlie” Lester, “is known as the quintessential bachelor with a constant stream of 10 or more girlfriends living with him in the Palace at any one time,” Sorenson writes. “Because he was sexually dysfunctional, despite a spate of pharmaceutical remedies, most of the required sex nights wound up consisting of girlfriends performing sexual acts on each other.”
The story goes on to describe how one Toy, “Maura,” was asked to watch in the bedroom and woke up much later, naked and groggy in a bedroom closet. “A few of Charlie’s girlfriends confirmed to Maura that she had indeed been drugged and molested,” Sorenson writes.
Rumors have abounded over the years about sexual behavior at the mansion, particularly with Jill Ann Spaulding’s self-published memoir, “Jill Ann: Upstairs” – detailing her “realization that the Playboy Mansion isn’t Barbie’s Dreamhouse, but a brokerage house where dangerous sex is traded for stardom.”
While Playboy execs have not yet seen Sorenson’s story, the advance press release already has Hefner on a tear. The sultan of skin Fed Ex-ed her a furious letter threatening legal action as soon as it hit the wires.
Sorenson, in turn, passed the buck to Citizen Culture editor Jonathon Feit. “I hope your team of lawyers are as good as his are,” Sorensen said via e-mail.
The story is a 180-degree turn for Sorenson, who wrote a glowing article of Hefner’s world for Australian magazine Sway just one year ago.
“Nobody’s seen the story,” a spokeswoman for Playboy said. “It’d be silly for us to comment before that.” She added on Hef’s behalf, “Divini is a Playmate and Divini is a friend.”
However, an internal Playboy e-mail obtained by PAGE SIX suggests executives there are bracing for the worst. “Ouch,” reads the e-mail. “Unfortunately it looks like Divini’s story in Citizen Culture is largely negative although she tries to hide behind it being fiction.”