[ni'k]

While Ron Jr. may never have questioned his father and the mushrooming cult of Scientology, a growing uneasiness began to take hold of him. In 1953 he married Henrietta, whom he never allowed to join the church. They were to have six children --Deborah, Leif, Esther, Eric, Harry and Alex, age twelve, who suffers from Down's Syndrome-- plus six grandchildren, none or whom were ever members of Scientology. The importance of family life, especially in contrast to his own up-bringing, caused Ron Jr. to question his life as a member of Scientology, albeit privately. Other factors also caused Ron Jr. to think about breaking away from the cult that was dominating his life. His father's autocratic and arbitrary control of Scientology often led to violence, and the young Hubbard began to be disturbed by his own participation. Certain questionable transactions involving drug dealing and the transfer of large sums of money abroad by his father was another troubling factor. But, he says, the breaking point came over his father's involvement with the Russians. Finally, in 1959, when his father was in Australia, Ron, his wife, and two children fled the Church of Scientology.
According to Ron Jr., life was to become a nightmarish existence. No matter, where the family went in the United States, it would not take long for a member of the organization to find them. Because he knew too much about Scientoiogy and its founder, Ron says, attempts were made to ensure his silence. For many years L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. kept a low profile.


Keeping silent did not end Ron's terror of what his father and followers might do to him and his family. In 1976 his half brother Quentin died under mysterious circumstances that Ron is certain was murder. Quentin, a son of Scientology's leader, was a drug abuser and an embarassment to his father. Whether all these questions were signs ot paranoia finally became less important to Ron than discovering, once and for all, the truth about his father. In 1980 Ron became convinced that his father was dead, and that his death was being kept a secret by the Church of Scientology, lest knowledge of his death cause chaos in the organization. He filed his petition and an open war was declared. Should he win the suit by proving that his father is either dead or incompetent, Ron and other family members will receive the millions of dollars believed to be part of L. Ron Hubbard's estate.
For some thirty years, stories, rumors, and innuendo about the Church of Scientology have been whispered, and sometimes reported, internationally. Obviously, the final judgment of L. Ron Hubbard. Jr., and his allegations remains to be made. But because of his high-level involvement for such a long time with this controversial organization, he himself has become a newsworthy figure. To find out what this man at the center of an international firestorm is like. Penthouse sent contributing editor Allan Sonnenschein to Carson City, Nev, where he met Hubbard in the small three-bedroom apartment in which he lives (he manages the apartment complex). "DeWolf." Sonnenschein told us, "is a stocky and ruddy-complexioned man, with thinning red hair. Despite his almost continuous involvement with lawyers of both sides of his case, DeWolf was very relaxed during the several hours. I spent with him. He seemed convinced that his desire to tell his story after all these years was of vital importance ... and he spoke with a firmness and intensity befitting a person who claims to be risking his life by speaking out."
Because of the seriousness of Mr. DeWolf's charges and because his father has affected the lives of thousands, if not millions, of people, Penthouse will be launching an independent investigation of these charges. The results will be published in a forthcoming issue.
Penthouse: Before you filed your lawsuit and began speaking openly about Scientology, there was very little news of it in the media. Why do you think there has been so little investigation of Scientology?

Hubbard: it's very simple. Scientology has always had a "fair-game doctrine"--a policy of doing absolutely anything to stop an investigation or publication of a critical article in a magazine or newspaper. They have run some incredible operations on the several people who have tried to write books about Scientology. It was almost like a terror campaign. First they'd try throwing every possible lawsuit at the reporter or newspaper. We had a team of attorneys to do just that. The goal was to destroy the enemy. So the solution was always to attack, full-bore, with every possible resource, from every angle, instantaneously it can certainly be overwhelming. A guy would get slapped with twenty-seven lawsuits, and our lawyers would start depositioning absolutely anybody who ever knew the man, digging up dirt while at the same time putting together an operation that would get him into further trouble. I know of one case, concerning Paulette Cooper, who wrote a book called The Scandal of Scientology, in which they spent almost $500.000 trying to destroy her.

Penthouse: So you think the press was intimidated?

Hubbard: Oh, absolutely. All the way through, since the fifties. I found this very sad. It seemed very much like Germany in the thirties. The freedom of the press seemed buried. They got scared. They thought. "Well, who wants to go through ten years of lawsuits, just because we printed the name L. Ron Hubbard?" I'm delighted to see that Penthouse has the balls to print this interview.

Penthouse: Why do you think it's so risky?
Hubbard: My father drilled into all of us: Don't go to court thinking to win a lawsuit. You go to court to harass, to delay, to exhaust the enemy financially, physically, mentally. You file every motion you can think of and you just lock them up in court. The courts, for my father, were never used to seek justice or redress, put to destroy the people he thought were enemies, to prevent negative stories from appearing. He just wanted complete control of the press --and got it.

Penthouse: What exactly is Scientology?

Hubbard: Scientology is a power-and-money-and-intelligence-gathering game. To use common, everyday English, Scientology says that you and I and everybody else willed ourselves into being hundreds of trillions of years ago --just by deciding to be. We willed ourselves into being ourselves. Through wild space games, interaction, fights, and wars in the grand science-fiction tradition, we created this universe --all the matter, energy, space, and time of this universe. And so through these trillions of years, we have become the effect of our own cause and we now find ourselves trapped in bodies. So the idea of Scientology "auditing" or "counseling" or "processing" is to free yourself from your body and to return you to the original godlike state or, in Scientology jargon, an operating Thetan --O.T. We are all fallen gods, according to Scientology, and the goal is to be returned to that state.
Penthouse: And what is the Church of Scientology?

Hubbard: It's one of my father's many organizations. It was formed in 1953, basically to avoid the harassment of my father by the medical profession and the IRS. The idea of Scientology didn't really exist before that point as a religion, but my father hit upon turning it into a church after he started feeling pressured.