Porn fetish Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas was 'raving alcoholic' ... until he quit booze and went downhill, says ex-girlfriend



Entangled: Troubled U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice caught in a long running sexual harassment fight, has been described by an ex-girlfriend as 'raving alcoholic' with porn fetish - who then went downhill.

Lawyer Lillian McEwen dated Thomas before his appointment to the Supreme Court and told CNN's Larry King Live show that she believed a woman who had accused him of sexual harrassment in 1991, because she knew him.

Thomas was accused by former colleague Anita Hill during his 1991 Senate confirmation hearing for appointment to the Supreme Court's nine-man elite.

He denied the allegations, which threatened to derail his appointment, and described it at the time as a kind of 'lynching'.



The accusation related to the 1980s when they worked together at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Thomas was later appointed to his high-profile position, however, the case has resurfaced after Thomas's wife Virginia, left an message on Hill's answering machine asking her to apologise for 'what you did with my husband'.

A furious Hill passed the message to the FBI.

Now a former girlfriend of Thomas's has waded into the argument because, she says, she was initially 'tricked' into commenting on the story by a newspaper reporter and wanted to give her side of the story in full detail.

Lillian McEwen had never previously spoken publicly about her relationship with Thomas but gave a live televised interview to the CNN show Larry King Live.



Pen portrait: Lillian McEwen, a former girlfriend of Thomas's, gave an unflattering description of him during a live TV interview

McEwen, a lawyer, dated Thomas for several years before he was nominated to the Supreme Court and painted a distinctly negative picture of the man.



She said that when they first met, Thomas may have been a 'raving alcoholic' and that who used pornography to help fulfill sexual fantasies.



However, when Thomas gave up alcohol, she said, instead of improving he 'went backwards' and became an angry, obsessive man who bullied his son.

King said during the program that Thomas' office declined to offer any reaction to the topics of the interview.

When contacted by Mail Online, a spokesperson for Thomas said he 'has no comment' on McEwen's claims.



A former prosecutor and administrative law judge who has written her own memoir and is seeking a publisher, McEwen said she believed Hill's account of sexually suggestive statements by Thomas because of his use of pornography.

'I suppose I would call it a fetish or a hobby,' she said of Thomas.



FBI intervention: Virginia Thomas, left, left a message on the answering machine of Anita Hill, who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in 1991

'It was something that was very important to him, something that he talked about.'

McEwan said the pornography bored her and she wouldn't watch pornographic videos with him, but she also said she enabled his fantasies tied to the pornography 'because we had a sexual relationship.'

'I didn't disapprove of it. I just didn't care,' she said.

According to McEwen, Thomas underwent a major personality change when he gave up alcohol that eventually caused her to leave the relationship.

'Clarence became not the person I knew when I first met him,' she said, adding that he 'drank to excess' when they first met and might have been a 'raving alcoholic' at that time.



When he gave up alcohol, she said, he became 'angry, short-tempered, asexual' and obsessively ambitious, doing 'weird things', such as taking long runs in the dark before dawn.

Husband and wife: Supreme Court Justice Clarence with Virginia

Asked if she believed back then he was qualified to reach his goal of being a Supreme Court justice, McEwen said it was a difficult question and cited 'instability', a 'lack of intellectual curiosity', and trouble with concentrating when reading for a long time as issues about Thomas that would make it difficult to do the job.

Thomas 'went backwards' during the time she knew him and became a bully to his son, McEwen said, and she added that she once turned him down when Thomas asked if he and his son could move in with her.

Eventually, McEwen said, 'it was time for me to go.'

Thomas is one of the most conservative justices on the nine-member Supreme Court, and is known for rarely if ever asking questions during hearings.

To McEwen, his conservative rulings amount to a kind of revenge fueled by anger against liberals who he believes turned against him.

'His enemies are people who are active in civil rights, professors who have criticized him and anybody who disagrees with the conservative friends that he has such as Rush Limbaugh,' she said.

