TWIN sisters Karissa and Kristina Shannon thought they found their ticket to stardom at the age of 18 when they were plucked out of obscurity and joined the illustrious stars of Playboy. However, now 34, the stars have opened up about how their lives were nothing like they expected them to be – detailed tragic details hidden from the public eye. The duo, who were born in Clearwater Beach, Florida, moved from their trailer park home into the Playboy mansion in 2008.
They soon became cast members of reality series The Girls Next Door, which tracked life of the women who were then 83-year-old Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends. Karissa and Kristina also held joint centrefold spreads. Karissa and Kristina have both since claimed they were “groomed” by Hefner, who died in 2017 at the age of 91, and compare their time at the mansion to "being in a cult".
The pair believed they wouldn’t be sleeping with Hefner, despite being called his girlfriend, believing it to be an image that wouldn’t be realistic due to his age. In one instance, recalled in A&E docu-series Secrets Of Playboy, the pair said he forced them to engage in a threesome with him at the age of 19, later contracting sexually transmitted infection, chlamydia. Kristina said in the documentary: “I believe that Hef would prey on the younger girls, like us, who came from a bad background, or the girls who were not so pretty, he could promise him, here's this beautiful castle, and I have all these surgeons.
” Karissa als.