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The San Francisco Chronicle
April 24, 1951
Ron Hubbard Insane, Says His Wife
LOS ANGELES, April 23 (UP)---
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.
10, 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 an annulment of their marriage if the court finds
she never was legally marriedto the dianetics founder.
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