Sara Northrup Hollister - The Dianetics Years

The Dianetics Years

The final version of Dianetics was written at Bay Head, New Jersey in a cottage which the science fiction editor John W. Campbell had found for the Hubbards. Sara, who was beginning a pregnancy, was said to have been delighted with the location. In three years of marriage to Hubbard, she had set up home in seven different states and had never stayed in one place for more than a few months. She gave birth on March 8, 1950 to a daughter, Alexis Valerie. A month later Sara was made a director of the newly established Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey, an organization founded to disseminate knowledge of Dianetics. The Hubbards moved to a new house in Elizabeth to be near the Foundation. Sara became Hubbard's personal auditor (Dianetic counselor) and was hailed by him as one of the first Dianetic "Clears".

Dianetics became an immediate bestseller when it was published in May 1950. Only two months later, over 55,000 copies had been sold and 500 Dianetics groups had been set up across the United States. The Dianetics Foundation was making a huge amount of money, but problems were already evident: money was pouring out as fast as it was coming in, due to lax financial management. By October, the Foundation's financial affairs had reached a crisis point. According to his public relations assistant, Barbara Kaye, Hubbard became increasingly paranoid and authoritarian due to "political and organizational problems with people grabbing for power." He began an affair with the twenty-year-old Kaye, much to the annoyance of Sara, who was clearly aware of the liaison. One evening he arranged a double-date with his wife and Kaye, who was accompanied by Miles Hollister, an instructor in the Los Angeles Dianetic Foundation. The dinner party backfired drastically; Sara began an affair with Hollister, a handsome 22-year-old who was college-educated and a noted sportsman.

The marriage broke down rapidly in the following months. Sara and Hubbard had violent rows, sending Hubbard into a depression. Kaye recalled later that "he was very down in the dumps about his wife. He told me how he had met Sara. He said he went to a party and got drunk and when he woke up in the morning he found Sara was in bed with him. He was having a lot of problems with her. I remember he said to me I was the only person he knew who would set up a white silk tent for him. I was rather surprised when we were driving back to LA on Sunday evening, he stopped at a florist to buy some flowers for his wife." In November 1950, Sara attempted suicide by taking sleeping pills. He blamed Kaye for the suicide bid and summarily dismissed her from the Foundation.

Hubbard attempted to patch up the marriage in January 1951 by inviting Sara and baby Alexis to Palm Springs, California where he had rented a house. The situation soon became tense again; Richard de Mille, son of the famous director Cecil B. de Mille, recalled that "there was a lot of turmoil and dissension in the Foundation at the time; he kept accusing Communists of trying to take control and he was having difficulties with Sara. It was clear their marriage was breaking up – she was very critical of him and he told me she was fooling around with Hollister and he didn't trust her." She left Palm Springs on February 3, leaving Hubbard to complain that Sara "had hypnotized him in his sleep and commanded him not to write."

Three weeks later, Hubbard abducted both Sara and Alexis with the aid of two of his Dianetics Foundation staff. In the early hours of February 25, Sara was bundled into the back of a car and driven to San Bernardino, California, where Hubbard attempted to find a doctor to examine his wife and declare her insane. His search was unsuccessful and he released her at Yuma Airport across the state line in Arizona. He promised that he would tell her where Alexis was if she signed a piece of paper saying that she had gone with him voluntarily. Sara agreed but Hubbard instead flew to Chicago, where he found a psychologist who wrote a favorable report about his mental condition to refute Sara's accusations. He subsequently returned to the Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There he wrote a letter informing the FBI that Sara and her lover Miles Hollister – whom he had fired from the Foundation's staff and, according to Hollister, had threatened with death – were among fifteen "known or suspected Communists" in his organization. He listed them as:

SARA NORTHRUP (HUBBARD): formerly of 1003 S. Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena, Calif. 25 yrs. of age, 5'10", 140 lbs. Currently missing somewhere in California. Suspected only. Had been friendly with many Communists. Currently intimate with them but evidently under coercion. Drug addiction set in fall 1950. Nothing of this known to me until a few weeks ago. Separation papers being filed and divorce applied for. MILES HOLLISTER: Somewhere in the vicinity of Los Angeles. Evidently a prime mover but very young. About 22 yrs, 6', 180 lbs. Black hair. Sharp chin, broad forehead, rather Slavic. Confessedly a member of the Young Communists. Center of most turbulence in our organization. Dissmissed in February when affiliations discovered. Active and dangerous. Commonly armed. Outspokenly disloyal to the U.S.

In another letter sent in March, Hubbard told the FBI that Sara was a Communist and a drug addict, and offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could resolve Sara's problems through the application of Dianetics techniques.

Sara filed a kidnapping complaint with the Los Angeles Police Department on her return home but was rebuffed by the police, who dismissed the affair as a mere domestic dispute. She finally filed suit at the Los Angeles Superior Court in April 1951, demanding the return of Alexis. The dispute immediately became front-page news: the newspapers ran headlines such as "Cult Founder Accused of Tot Kidnap", "'Dianetic' Hubbard Accused of Plot to Kidnap Wife", "Hiding of Baby Charged to Dianetics Author". Hubbard fled to Havana, Cuba, where he wrote a letter to Sara:

Dear Sara,

I have been in the Cuban military hospital and I am being transferred to the United States next week as a classified scientist immune from interference of all kinds.

Though I will be hospitalized probably a long time, Alexis is getting excellent care. I see her every day. She is all I have to live for.

My wits never gave way under all you did and let them do but my body didn't stand up. My right side is paralyzed and getting more so. I hope my heart lasts. I may live a long time and again I may not. But Dianetics will last 10,000 years – for the Army and Navy have it now.

My Will is all changed. Alexis will get a fortune unless she goes to you as she would then get nothing. Hope to see you once more. Goodbye – I love you.

Ron.

In reality, the very much un-paralyzed Hubbard had made an unsuccessful request for assistance from the US military attaché to Havana. The attaché did not act on the request; having asked the FBI for background information, he was told that Hubbard had been interviewed but the "agent conducting interview considered Hubbard to be mental case."

Sara filed for divorce on April 23, charging Hubbard with causing her "extreme cruelty, great mental anguish and physical suffering". Her allegations produced more lurid headlines: not only was Hubbard accused of bigamy and kidnapping, but she had been subjected to "systematic torture, including loss of sleep, beatings, and strangulations and scientific experiments". Because of his "crazy misconduct" she was in "hourly fear of both the life of herself and of her infant daughter, who she has not seen for two months". She had consulted doctors who "concluded that said Hubbard was hopelessly insane, and, crazy, and that there was no hope for said Hubbard, or any reason for her to endure further; that competent medical advisers recommended that said Hubbard be committed to a private sanitarium for psychiatric observation and treatment of a mental ailment known as paranoid schizophrenia."

In May 1951, Sara filed a further complaint against Hubbard, accusing him of having fled to Cuba to evade the divorce papers that she was seeking to serve. By that time, however, he had moved to Wichita, Kansas. Sara's attorney filed another petition asking for Hubbard's assets to be frozen as he had been found "hiding" in Wichita "but that he would probably leave town upon being detected". Hubbard, for his part, wrote to the FBI to further denounce Sara as a Communist secret agent. He accused Communists of destroying his business, ruining his health and withholding material of interest to the US Government. His misfortunes had been caused by "a woman known as Sara Elizabeth Northrup . . . whom I believed to be my wife, having married her and then, after some mix-up about a divorce, believed to be my wife in common law." He accused Sara of having conspired in a bid to assassinate him and described how he had found love letters to his wife from Miles Hollister, a "member of the Young Communists." Her real motive in filing for divorce, he claimed, was to seize control of Dianetics. He urged the FBI to start a "round-up" of "vermin Communists or ex-Communists", starting with Sara, and declared:

I believe this woman to be under heavy duress. She was born into a criminal atmosphere, her father having a criminal record. Her half-sister was an inmate of an insane asylum. She was part of a free love colony in Pasadena. She had attached herself to a Jack Parsons, the rocket expert, during the war and when she left him he was a wreck. Further, through Parsons, she was strangely intimate with many scientists of Los Alamo Gordos . I did not know or realize these things until I myself investigated the matter. She may have a record . . . Perhaps in your criminal files or on the police blotter of Pasadena you will find Sara Elizabeth Northrop, age about 26, born April 8, 1925, about 5'9", blond-brown hair, slender . . . I have no revenge motive nor am I trying to angle this broader than it is. I believe she is under duress, that they have something on her and I believe that under a grilling she would talk and turn state's evidence.

Fortunately for Sara – as it was the peak of the McCarthyite "Red Scare" – Hubbard's allegations were apparently ignored by the FBI, which filed his letter but took no further action. In June 1951, she finally secured the return of Alexis by agreeing to cancel her receivership action and divorce suit in California in return for a divorce 'guaranteed by L. Ron Hubbard'. In return, she signed a statement, evidently written by Hubbard himself, retracting the allegations that she had made against him:

I, Sara Northrup Hubbard, do hereby state that the things I have said about L. Ron Hubbard in courts and the public prints have been grossly exaggerated or entirely false.

I have not at any time believed otherwise than that L. Ron Hubbard is a fine and brilliant man.

I make this statement of my own free will for I have begun to realize that what I have done may have injured the science of Dianetics, which in my studied opinion may be the only hope of sanity in future generations.

I was under enormous stress and my advisers insisted it was necessary for me to carry through an action as I have done.

There is no other reason for this statement than my own wish to make atonement for the damage I may have done. In the future I wish to lead a quiet and orderly existence with my little girl far away from the enturbulating influences which have ruined my marriage.

Sara Northrup Hubbard.

Interviewed more than 35 years later, Sara stated that she had signed the statement because "I thought by doing so he would leave me and Alexis alone. It was horrible. I just wanted to be free of him!"

On June 12, Hubbard was awarded a divorce in the County Court of Sedgwick County, Kansas on the basis of Sara's "gross neglect of duty and extreme cruelty", which had caused him "nervous breakdown and impairment to health." She did not give evidence but left Wichita as soon as Alexis was returned to her. Speaking to Scientologists around this time, Hubbard blamed shadowy outside forces for the bad publicity: "We have just been through the saw mill, through the public presses. Every effort was made to butcher my personal reputation. A young girl is nearly dead because of this effort. My wife Sara."