The Instagram Campaign, 2023–2024: Exhibits

This page supports section 8 of Start Here. It shows eighteen posts from the Liana Shanti Instagram account (@lianashanti, run by Liane Wilson), 2023–2024, chosen on one rule: each connects to something already examined by a court or by journalists — the families’ letters at her 2023 probation review, the sworn declarations in Life Mastery Network LLC v. Haygarth, or the cult experts quoted by The Daily Beast. It is not a selection of her worst posts; it is a selection of posts the record already speaks to.

Each image is reproduced as posted, with the account name and Instagram’s own time-since-posting stamp left in frame. The only changes are the cropping of the phone screen, the watermark, and the redaction of private individuals’ names and faces. People are left named only where they are already named in a court filing or in published journalism: the defendants in the civil case, the experts, and former members whose treatment is described under oath. The May 22, 2026 omnibus order held that Wilson is a public figure for the purposes of that case; her own words are reproduced here on that basis.

The campaign had a cost: in August 2026 a federal jury found that Wilson’s statements about three Canadians she had targeted — publicly and by name, from October 2022 right through the trial itself, almost four years — were defamatory and awarded them $40.1 million on their counterclaims (see The Verdict).

The people who sued — and won

Three of the people the account named again and again — Byron Horvath, Stefanie Horvath and Paula Haygarth — were the people Wilson later sued. They counterclaimed and won. From 2023 the hashtags changed form: a person’s full name joined to their home town or province, so that a search for the person finds the accusation.

Leveraging a child: one former member

In September 2024 the account turned on one former member, a mother in North Carolina, identified here only as J.M. Over two weeks it named her under three successive names, posted her town, her business and her partner’s workplace, told followers her daughter was being abused, named the child, and sent followers to the police and to the Exposing Family Abuse website — while telling them that “mothers are involved in the TRFFIKING of their own children.”

Every name, the child’s name and photograph, the town, the business and the workplace are redacted below. The pattern was later described under oath: a former member declared that Wilson “posted negatively about her, posted private details about her, and encouraged other students in her community to contact child protective services in North Carolina (where [she] resided) to report her as an unfit mother without valid bases for doing so” (ECF 84-3 ¶14).

The kidnapping panic: January 6–8, 2023

Over three nights in January 2023 — the 6th, 7th and 8th — the Liana Shanti Instagram account posted dozens of stories telling her followers that their children were in “immediate danger of kidnapping,” that relatives of her students were abusers protected by a “#familycult,” and that the people she named were responsible. Three months later, twenty-three families filed letters at her federal probation review describing a different pattern: mothers inside her community taking children across the U.S. border without the other parent’s consent (Document 87).

Spiritual intimidation

On January 7, 2023, between the accusations, the Liana Shanti Instagram account told its followers what happens to the people she turns her attention to. The four stories below ran in sequence, delivered as psychic sight from a woman who has described herself as “Psychic since childhood” (see Paid access to a self-described psychic).

Attacking the experts

The account also turned on the cult-intervention specialists whose work families had relied on — the same experts later quoted by The Daily Beast.

What the record says about this campaign

Two former members described the pattern under oath in March 2026. One declarant stated that after students left, Wilson “shared personal, private details about such former students publicly on her social media account, @lianashanti Instagram, and encouraged current students to engage in similar behavior, including posting on social media, tagging employers, and contacting child welfare authorities” (ECF 84-3 ¶14).

The other declarant described the same practice from the inside: when a student left, Wilson “would campaign publicly on her social media platforms, sharing private direct messages and personal information that had been disclosed to her in confidence while she was acting in a mentoring capacity,” and after her own removal in April 2025 Wilson “posted hundreds of Instagram stories about me and other members” (ECF 84-2 ¶¶9, 37). An eight-year member told the U.S. Attorney’s Office in April 2024 that “Upon my recent departure from the community, Liana Shanti launched a public defamation assault against me, which is ongoing” (Document 132). Wilson moved to strike both civil declarations; the court refused.

Paid access to a self-described psychic

Everything on this page was posted by a woman who sold access to herself as a spiritual teacher and psychic. Her own website, lianashanti.com, introduced her in her own words: “Psychic since childhood, I was always offering ways to help people” (archived June 27, 2022; see I See Dead People).

That access was priced, and the price list was before her sentencing judge in July 2023: a former student’s letter attached Wilson’s booking page offering a “One on One Messenger Session in Signal App — 15 minutes @ $300.00,” alongside her Illuminations membership at $50–$69 a month and courses priced up to $4,800. The same letter described private groups and Signal chats where members could “participate in Liana’s psychic readings” (Document 110, attachments 1–2).

Former members call it mentoring — the “mentoring capacity” in which, one declarant says, they confided the private details later used against them (ECF 84-2 ¶37).

Nine months after the July 2023 letter, the eight-year member’s statement, with receipts attached, said she had “paid for one-on-one sessions 1-3 times per month for almost 2 years with Liana Shanti specifically to receive guidance on matters of personal and spiritual healing with specific focus on my personal relationships, childhood abuse, and healing” (Document 132). The readings of strangers’ lungs and illnesses in Exhibits 13–16 come from the same claimed gift.

The case Wilson brought against her critics went to a jury in August 2026 — see The Verdict.

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