In the next episode of A&E’s ‘Secrets of Playboy,’ Sondra Theodore and her daughter discuss the toll being part of Playboy’s inner sanctum had on their relationship

It took a daughter years to realize that her mother had a drastically different experience after growing up spending time in the Playboy mansion with “uncle Hef,” which at one point resulted in a years-long rift.

Hugh Hefner’s loyal live-in lover and former Playmate Sondra Theodore, 66 (Miss July 1977), resided in the infamous home from 1976 until 1981. Theodore and her adult daughter, Katie Manzella, offer intimate information about the traumatic effects being a part of Playboy’s inner sanctum had on their relationship in the forthcoming episode of A&E’s Secrets of Playboy, premiering Monday. They also discuss how they’ve finally found peace.

Theodore made an appearance on the first season of Secrets of Playboy in 2022, where she aired complaints that a domineering Hefner had forced her to partake in hedonistic behavior and other vices. In this week’s program, she went into further detail about these accusations, stating that several of Hefner’s pals had raped her during these group sex encounters, which she claims happened to her dismay “five nights a week.” She further asserted that Hefner had published private images of her online without her permission.

When Katie was a baby, she started visiting the estate with her mother, and she recalls that the place then seemed “magical,” like a “wonderland.”

She simply referred to the ex-boyfriend of her mother as “uncle Hef”; he was a pleasant and captivating person who “was iconic.”

“And the way he lit up when he saw me, it was just like, it was otherworldly,” she continues.

For these reasons, she never fully grasped the extent of the trauma her mom has alleged she endured at the mansion. Their individual encounters with Hefner, as well as their physical experiences inside the mansion, had been staggeringly different.

“When Hef was still alive, and I was in that environment, it’s almost like I wouldn’t have been able to hear her,” Katie says. “If she tried to tell me what had happened to her, I was [too] in his world then. Like, going to Sunday Funday and to the Sunday movie nights and swimming in the Grotto and playing in the game room.” 

She didn’t really get until she saw Theodore tell her tale on the first season of Secrets of Playboy.

“Once I watched her episode, it almost felt like I had known her truth all along, and everything made sense. Hugh Hefner’s lifestyle was obviously wrong, I thought. My mum experienced that, of course,” she claims. “I was aware that Hef and my mother were not monogamous. However, I didn’t immediately think, “Oh, what does it mean? What does that resemble?

She believes that Hef started manipulating her when she first arrived at the estate at the age of 19 (he was 50 at the time), and it took Theodore years to come to terms with this.

“At first, it worked like magic. He had a lovely home with all the trappings. According to Theodore, who speaks to PEOPLE, “He knew exactly what to say to me.” “And that’s when he slowly got to work once he had me hooked and hauled in, line and sinker. And then things really started to get difficult.

Even though Theodore fell in love with Hefner, she detested the majority of the requirements he made of her as his girlfriend. They split up and she moved out in 1981. She later got married to Ray Manzella, a manager for prominent Playmates like Pamela Anderson whom she had met at the house. Katie, 34, and her brother Taylor, 35, are the products of their union.Manzella and she eventually got divorced.

Though Theodore was no longer romantically involved with Hefner, she continued to sometimes hang out at the mansion with Manzella and their kids. “I know it sounds weird, but I would go back. That’s where my friends were,” she explains. 

Katie says she’s disturbed by how many people have lashed out at her mom for bringing her to the mansion to visit as a kid.

“It was because she was in survival mode, and she was doing the best she could to deal with the reality of participating in that world. And [the mansion] was her sisterhood,” she tells PEOPLE. “That’s not just an easy thing to walk away from.”

Plus, Katie says, the mansion never felt like a “danger zone” for her. “I was very safe. If anything, being her daughter protected me there,” she says.

In fact, she remembers feeling special and singled out — in a good way — as a “mansion baby:”

“There was one night that a limo came and picked us up from our house and took us to the mansion, and we stayed the night, and me and my brother were really young,” she recalls. “We were just all running around being kids. And then the limo took us to school the next day.” 

Nowadays, Katie is proud of her mom for speaking out about the alleged transgressions she suffered in Hefner’s house — though in the show, both women describe a severe years-long disconnect in their relationship.

“It’s very complicated, but at the end of the day, seeing my mom tell her story, I had a whole paradigm shift where I was able to see who Hugh Hefner for who he really was, while still honoring and differentiating my [own] experience,” Katie says.

“At the end of the day, he was a master manipulator,” she continues. “And he charmed me and used the same tactics as he did with my mom, but not in a way where he was trying to have a [sexual] relationship with me.” 

In addition to the massive relief of being close with her daughter again, Theodore relishes the knowledge that sharing what she went through has helped others. She says she’s received “hundreds of messages” from women who saw themselves in her story. 

“I was so thrilled that I took something that I was so afraid to tell, so afraid to open up, and was closed even for myself,” she adds. “And turned it into something [meaningful].”