7/30/2021 L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.

Interview in Penthouse

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ENTERTAINMENT

Founder of Scientology's son said his dad drugged

him and thought of himself as the Antichrist
Christina Sterbenz
Apr 8, 2015, 1:13 PM

While HBO's recent

documentary "Going Clear"
mostly focuses on the strange
and allegedly abusive practices
present in Scientology, it also
chronicles the life of the
religion's founder, L. Ron
L. Ron Hubbard the elder
HBO/"Going
Hubbard. 
Clear"

In a 1983 interivew with Penthouse Magazine, Hubbard's now-

deceased son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., made some shocking claims about

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7/30/2021 L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. Interview in Penthouse

his father and his own childhood. 

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Once considered the heir to the Scientology throne, Junior eventually

defected, changed his name, and became one of the Church's — and
his father's — most vocal critics.

Junior, later known as Ronald DeWolf, said he was born two and a
half months early (weighing just two pounds, two ounces) as the
result of a failed abortion by his father. After the death of Aleister
Crowley, a famous English Occultist who considered himself the
Antichrist, Hubbard decided he should "wear the cloak of the beast"
and thought of himself as the devil incarnate, according to DeWolf.

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7/30/2021 L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. Interview in Penthouse

"What a lot of people don't realize is that Scientology is just black

magic spread out over a long time," DeWolf told Penthouse. 

Heavily involved as a teenager and young man in Scientology, DeWolf

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said he eventually became disenchanted with the rampant hypocrisy
and immorality of the church and his own father.

"I began to see that my father

was a sick, sadistic, vicious man.
I saw more and more parallels
between his behavior and what I
read about the way Hitler
thought and acted," he told
Penthouse. 
L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. also known as Ronald
DeWolf
YouTube/Mark Bunker

DeWolf said his father used excessive drugs like cocaine, peyote,
amphetamines, and barbiturates.

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7/30/2021 L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. Interview in Penthouse

Hubbard even encouraged his son to take drugs with him, according
to DeWolf. When DeWolf was 10 years old, he said, Hubbard allegedly
laced the boy's bubble gum with phenobarbital, a heavy sedative
most famous for its use in execution cocktails.
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Hubbard felt the drugs helped him access black magic's power to
brainwash people, according to DeWolf.

Because of his defection, DeWolf claimed he faced years of

persecution from Scientologists. He died at 57 in 1991. His grandson,
Jamie DeWolf, one of the few members of the family still willing to
speak out against the religion, remembers him as a warm, loving, yet
guarded grandparent, the Telegraph reported.  

When a Penthouse editor asked Scientology then-president Rev.

Heber Jentzsch if Hubbard would respond to his son's allegations,
Jentzsch said, "I will tell you this: if I were ever asked by Mr. Hubbard,
I will make sure that all of the media who have currently interviewed
him [Ronald DeWolf] will never, ever, ever, get a personal interview
[with Hubbard]."

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7/30/2021 L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. Interview in Penthouse

According to Lawrence Wright's book, "Going Clear: Scientology,

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Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief," which sparked the HBO
documentary of a similar title, the Church "fiercely disputes"
DeWolf's interview. 

In 1984, DeWolf went on tape, stating his comments were accurate.

Then in 1987, he signed an affidavit recanting the interview as "no
more than wild flights of fancy based on my own unlimited
imagination." 

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that five

years after DeWolf signed the affidavit he stated that he only recanted
the story to protect his wife and kids from the church. We have removed
that line.

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7/30/2021 L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. Interview in Penthouse

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More:
Scientology
Going Clear
L. Ron Hubbard
Penthouse

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