Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
- Old video resurfaced of Ginni Thomas discussing her departure from a group called Lifespring.
- In the video, Thomas discusses leaving the group, which has often been described as a cult.
- Ginni told The Washington Post in 1987 that she had been disturbed by some of the group’s practices.
An old video has resurfaced on Twitter that appears to show Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, discussing her departure from the Lifespring self-help cult during a 1989 gathering in Kansas.
The video was posted on Twitter by author Steven Hassan, who has written several books on cults and mind control. He identifies the woman to whom he is speaking in the video as Ginni Thomas.
“I knew Ginni Thomas. Ginni Thomas was in a cult (the large group awareness training cult, Lifespring). Here she is in 1989 speaking at an event I hosted for former members,” Hassan wrote in the post.
—Steven Hassan, PhD (@CultExpert) March 31, 2022
In the video, a woman who appears to be Thomas discusses the struggles she faced after leaving Lifespring.
“When you come away from a cult, you have to find a balance in your life as far as getting involved with fighting the cult or exposing it. And, kind of, the other angle is getting a sense of yourself, and what was it that made you get into that group and what open questions are there are that still need to be answered,” Thomas says.
“And I think I’m really trying and struggling with the balance between that. I want to expose Lifespring, I want to keep other people from going through that experience,” she added. “But I also don’t want to go overboard in that regard so that I can reconnect with my own needs in a spiritual way, which I still haven’t done.”
Lifespring group exercises included ridiculing members for their weight and forcing members to discuss their sexual experiences.
Steven Hassan/Twitter and Getty Images
Lifespring was founded in 1974 by John Hanley Sr. and is often categorized as part of the “human potential movement” of the era.
When Thomas was a member, Lifespring charged a steep $450 for its basic group training and $900 for its advanced program (that’s around $2,158.45 in 2022 dollars), according to a 1988 exposé on the group by D Magazine.
According to an archived version of its now-defunct website, group trainings: “led to improvements in participants’ self-confidence, self-esteem, lowered job stress, a heightened sense of control in life, and a more positive and pleasurable range of events and experiences in their lives.”
But many who participated in Lifespring said the group was coercive and used cult-like tactics to grow and maintain its membership. Members were kept in hours and days-long sessions and dared to push themselves beyond their limits. In some cases, that resulted in emotional breakthroughs, but for others, it caused pain, hardship, and even death.
According to a 2018 GQ article on the group, six people died in the course of Lifespring challenges. The organization faced dozens of negligence cases from former members and eventually dissolved in the early 90s.
Thomas’s connection to Lifespring was first discussed in 1991 while her husband was undergoing Supreme Court confirmation hearings. At the time, The Washington Post noted that she had enrolled in Lifespring in the early 1980s and had been a member for several years.
Thomas was, in fact, featured in a 1987 Post story about the group. In it, she shared that she had attended Lifespring and was disturbed by some of the group’s exercises, which included having trainees disrobe, ridiculing members for their body fat, and asking attendees pointed questions of a sexual nature.
Thomas told The Post she was forced to move to another part of the country to avoid the constant calls from current Lifespring members trying to lure her back in.
“I had intellectually and emotionally gotten myself so wrapped up with this group that I was moving away from my family and friends and the people I work with. My best friend came to visit me, and I was preaching at her, using that tough attitude they teach you,” she said at the time.
“As you’ll probably notice, Ginni seems likable (and she was)! After she left Lifespring, she got heavily involved in the movement to HELP former cult members exit cults,” Hassan wrote in the thread of his Twitter post.
“Sadly, the people who helped deprogram Ginni were also apparently involved in right-wing causes. As is the case with SO many former members, she was overly susceptible and went from one cult to another (The Cult of Trump),” Hassan wrote.
Neither Hassan nor Thomas responded immediately to Insider’s requests for comment.
Thomas made headlines last week when texts exchanged between her and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows came to light. In the texts, Thomas appeared to float QAnon-linked theories about the “Biden crime family” and also urged Meadows to rally Republicans around Trump in the wake of the 2020 election.
Thomas also admitted attending the Ellipse rally in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021 — which preceded the Capitol riot — but has denied having ties to its organizers and said she got cold and left before the Capitol riot. The January 6 committee is now weighing whether or not to call Thomas up for questioning by the panel investigating the Capitol Riot.
Meanwhile, over two dozen Democrats raised concerns this week about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ potential conflicts of interests, with some calling for Thomas to resign or for him to be impeached.
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