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Ron Hubbard insane, says his wife

Title: Ron Hubbard insane, says his wife
Date: Monday, 23 April 1951
Publisher:
Main source: link (68 KiB)

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LOS ANGELES, April 23 (UPI) — The wife of L. Ron Hubbard, 40, founder of the Dianetics Mental Health Movement, filed suit for divorce today, charging he is suffering from a mental ailment.

Mrs. Sara Northrup Hubbard, 25, said "competent medical advisers" had examined her 40-year-old husband and concluded he was "hopelessly insane" and should be placed in a private sanitarium for "psychiatric observation."

She said doctors told her her husband was suffering from a mental ailment "known as paranoid schizophrenia."

Mrs. Hubbard also charged he subjected her to "systematic torture" by beating and strangling her and, denying her sleep.

Her suit said Hubbard once told her he didn't want to be married and suggested that if she really loved him, she would kill herself because a divorce would "hurt his reputation"

Mrs. Hubbard described her husband's dianetics research foundation as his "alter ego" and said the institution did more than $1,000,000 business last year.

When informed of the doctors' recommendation that he be placed in a mental institution, Hubbard took their 13-month-old daughter, Alexis, from Mrs. Hubbard's apartment and went into hiding, the suit charged.

The wife also said Hubbard told her he was unmarried when they were wed Aug. 20, 1946, at Chestertown, Md., but it was not until December, 1947, that he divorced a former wife, Mrs. Margaret Grubb Hubbard, at Port Orchard, Wash.

Mrs. Hubbard asked $500,000 damages to compensate for the loss of "the golden years of a woman's life" and annulment of their marriage if the court finds she never was legally married to the dianetics [?]