The House Colleges and Universities Committee advanced a bill Wednesday to increase award amounts and expand eligibility to more Mississippians under the state’s largest college financial aid program.
Under House Bill 994, adult, part-time and low-income college students would be able to receive the Mississippi Resident Tuition Assistance Grant. All told, an estimated 37,000 more Mississippians, many who don’t receive any form of state financial aid for college, would be eligible for MTAG.
Depending on a student’s income and academic year, the bill would increase MTAG award amounts to a maximum of $2,000 a year. This would be the first time the Legislature has increased MTAG awards since the program was created in the 1990s to benefit middle-class Mississippians who aren’t eligible for the federal Pell Grant.
“It opens it up to every Mississippian out there,” said House Chair Donnie Scoggin, R-Ellisville, the bill sponsor. “From the poorest of the poor to the richest of the rich, there is some benefit.”
Though the bill has broad support, Scoggin said it faces a major hurdle: The cost. To fully fund the program, lawmakers would need to greenlight upwards of $30 million in additional spending. Last year, Mississippi spent just under $10 million on MTAG.
But Scoggin is hoping to convince lawmakers to see the changes as an investment in Mississippi’s workforce. He said it doesn’t matter how much the state of Mississippi spends on workforce development programs if potential students can’t afford to attend.
“My argument would be, very simply: Education is the future,” Scoggin said. “We’ve got to do something to help people go to college.”
During the committee meeting, Scoggin told members the bill is supported by community colleges and universities whose disagreement last year was one reason his proposal failed last session. That plan also sought to overhaul the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students, or HELP, grant.
The Mississippi Economic Council is also supporting this bill, which Scoggin worked on closely with the Office of Student Financial Aid and its director, Jennfier Rogers.After the committee meeting, multiple lawmakers came up to Rogers to tell her they supported the bill.
Rogers said that she worked on the proposal with a taskforce to set higher MTAG award amounts without increasing the overall cost of the program too much. Though it’s hard to say if the increased award amounts would be enough to affect student behavior, Rogers said studies have shown increasing grant aid has a positive impact on college graduation rates.
“I wish we could increase them more,” she said. “I think the award amounts need to be larger. But this is a reasonable first step.”
MTAG has lost significant buying power since it was created in 1995.
That year, the award amounts under MTAG for freshmen and sophomores covered roughly 10% of the average four-year, in-state tuition, room and board, and 20% for juniors and seniors, according to an analysis of federal data. In fall 2021, MTAG covered 2% of tuition, room and board for freshmen and sophomores, and 5% for juniors and seniors.
Scoggin said he doesn’t know yet where the money would come from to fund the bill, and that it will face competition from other initiatives.
“I think this is a priority, but someone else may think roads and bridges are a priority or someone else may think expanding Medicaid is a priority,” he said.
Scoggin said Republicans need to balance tax cuts with programs that can help Mississippians take personal responsibility.
“We’re trying to limit the government, but in doing that, we’re still trying to get people into that workforce development,” he said.
Two Mississippi Today investigations — “Committed to Jail” in collaboration ProPublica and “Unfettered Power” in collaboration with The New York Times — were named semifinalists for the coveted Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.
The two Mississippi Today projects were among 30 semifinalists that judges “deemed to be of extremely high quality and in keeping with the Prize’s criteria for impact on US public policy,” a Feb. 14 press release said.
Mississippi Today was the only local newsroom to earn multiple 2024 Goldsmith semifinalist honors. Mississippi Today journalists previously won the 2023 Goldsmith Prize for “The Backchannel” investigation of the state’s welfare scandal and the 2020 Goldsmith Prize for an investigation with The Marshall Project of the state’s restitution centers.
“This type of recognition is proof positive of Mississippi Today’s power to bring national audiences to important local news through partnerships with media institutions like ProPublica and The New York Times,” said Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today editor-in-chief. “Our journalists are certainly deserving of being continually considered among the very best in the nation.”
“Committed to Jail,” a 2023 Mississippi Today and ProPublica investigation, revealed that Mississippi counties jail hundreds of people without criminal charges every year, for days or weeks at a time, solely because they may need mental health treatment — a practice that has resulted in 14 deaths since 2006 and is unique in scope in the United States.
We found that in just 19 of the state’s 82 counties, people were jailed without charges more than 2,000 times over four years. We spoke with 14 Mississippians about their experiences in jail and learned that people detained for being sick are generally treated the same as people accused of crimes. We obtained Mississippi Bureau of Investigation reports on jail deaths and pored over lawsuits and news clips to identify 15 people who died after being jailed during this process since 2006, (including the most recent death in January, after the original series was published). And we surveyed behavioral health officials and disability rights advocates in all 50 states to show that Mississippi stands alone.
“Unfettered Power,” a 2023 investigation from the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today and The New York Times, revealed how Mississippi sheriffs rule like kings, wielding vast power, exploiting and abusing the very people they are called to protect with no one stopping them.
Sheriffs accused of raping women in their custody without consequences. Beating others they arrested or jailed. Spying on citizens for personal reasons. Deputies using Tasers to torment residents. And a 20-year reign of terror by a “Goon Squad” that barged into homes in the middle of the night, handcuffing or holding people at gunpoint, and torturing them into confessing or providing information.
Mississippi Today and The New York Times produced a series of stories that revealed not just these travesties but also how powerful allies in the criminal justice system – from local prosecutors and judges to the state attorney general and the Justice Department – had repeatedly failed to investigate or prosecute sheriffs for them.
The Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, one of the nation’s most prestigious journalism honors, is housed at the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. Finalists for the 2024 award will be announced in the coming weeks, and the winner will be announced on April 3.
Patrick Mahomes was the MVP and the cameras were often on Taylor Swift, but there was plenty of Magnolia State on display at the Super Bowl. Mississippi State alum Chris Jones dominated for the victorious Chiefs on the defensive line. Jackson State’s Sonic Boom made a surprise halftime appearance with Usher, and there was more. Also, all hail Patrick Williams, Pro Football Hall of Fame-bound.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said that deciding how to ensure the long-term financial solvency of the massive Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System is “the major issue” facing lawmakers during the current legislative session.
PERS provides pension benefits for more than 360,000 current and former government employees in Mississippi, including school district employees and higher education and community college staff.
The system has experienced financial problems for years that many argue have gone largely unaddressed. It has about $32 billion in assets to pay its retirees, but it is about $25 billion in long-term debt. It has a funding ratio of about 56%, meaning the system has just 56% of the revenue needed to cover its liabilities over a 30-year period.
PERS leaders this year are asking the Legislature for an infusion of cash — which lawmakers traditionally do not provide on an annual basis — to help offset the system’s uncertain financial future.
Hosemann recently said until the issues facing PERS are resolved, the Legislature cannot commit on how much to provide in funding for state agencies, schools and other programs.
“We are going to pay the retirees,” Hosemann said.
House Speaker Jason White, R-West, has also talked of the importance of addressing PERS.
“I think there has been a commitment at least around the coffee pot that we (legislators) want to fix this long term,” White said before the session began. “… For myself, I would say we are not going to just increase it (the amount of government money put into the plan) 5%, 10% and hope it gets better.”
While Hosemann and many legislative leaders appear to be locked in on PERS, the problems have not been addressed by Gov. Tate Reeves. Reeves, in the first year of his final term as governor, did not mention PERS in his recently released budget proposal. At a time when legislative leaders and local government officials are grappling with how to fund PERS, Reeves instead touted his plan to eliminate the state income tax, which would, if passed, do away with one-third of the state’s current annual general fund revenue.
Fixing the pension program, many leaders believe, will take a significant infusion of funds. Some proposed solutions could place a significant strain on city and county governments, on school districts and state agencies that currently pay into the system unless the Legislature commits to appropriating an additional amount of money.
During a recent meeting with the Senate Finance Committee, Ray Higgins, the PERS executive director, did not provide a specific amount of money that he believes the Legislature needed to contribute to the program. Hosemann has spoken of the program possibly needing an additional $360 million annually.
“When it comes down to the long-term sustainability of PERS, we should either fund it, change it, or eventually we may risk it,” Higgins wrote in a letter to lawmakers. “Revenue must increase, expenses and liabilities should decrease, or both.”
The retirement system’s revenue to pay pension benefits is generated in the following ways:
From employees contributing 9% of their salaries to PERS.
From employers or governmental entities contributing a sum equal to 17.4% of an employee’s paycheck to the program.
From investment income. Investment income is key since the employee/employer contributions are not enough to cover the monthly costs.
The average annual retirement income for retirees is about $26,900.
Multiple factors are contributing to the financial uncertainty in the system, including:
Recessions through the years that have impacted the investment earnings.
A shrinking governmental workforce and additional retirees.
Legislature-approved added benefits through the years, dating back to the 1990s — some of which were provided, some argue, without a revenue stream to pay for them.
Perhaps the most confusing and controversial change that placed stress on the system was the action by the 10-member board that governs PERS to change what is known as the assumed rate of return. Based on recommendations from actuaries, the board recently dropped the assumed rate of return from 7.5% to 7%, meaning that PERS’ investments will earn 7% instead of 7.5% annually. The change was made to paint what PERS officials said is a more accurate picture of the system’s financial outlook. But the lower assumed rate of return means the expectation is that the investment earnings will generate less money, thus causing more debt.
Sen. Daniel Sparks, R-Belmont, pointed out that at one point not too long ago the assumed rate of return was 8%. He said, optimistically, that each year the investment earnings exceed the assumed rate of returns means the system’s debt is decreased.
Still, the PERS board believes that strong investment earnings will not be enough to totally resolve the financial woes facing the system. The board plans to phase in a 5% increase in the employer contribution rate over a three-year period. There has been talk of phasing in a 10% increase in the employer contribution rate. The first 2% increase that will be enacted on July 1 will cost the state $60 million, not counting the cost for local and county governments. Under current law, the board has the authority to act on its own to increase the employer contribution rate, though the Legislature could change the law.
City and county officials have told legislators they cannot afford the increase.
Senate Appropriations Chair Briggs Hopson, R-Vicksburg, said he already is hearing from state agency directors about the issue.
“I guarantee they are coming to me saying whatever you do, give us enough money to pay for the PERS increase,” Hopson said. “ … Either we provide the money or they have to absorb it,” meaning they cannot provide raises or enact other programs that cost money.
Hosemann said such increases in the employer contribution would be “catastrophic” for the system since local governments would start hiring contract workers instead of full-time government employees who would be eligible for PERS pensions. That, Hosemann said, would further reduce the number of employees paying into the system.
Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, pointed out that each time the Legislature privatizes a governmental function it reduces the number of state employees paying into the system.
Bryan also pointed out that years ago, a separate public retirement system for Mississippi Highway Patrol troopers faced financial difficulties. Bryan said in that instance, the Legislature passed a law to place a fee on traffic citations with the revenue earned from the fee directed to the retirement system.
Whether there is the legislative will to create a similar source of revenue dedicated to the much larger PERS system remains to be seen.
In the meantime, the Legislature is expected to act on a proposal by the PERS board to change the benefits for new governmental hires. The proposal includes eliminating the guaranteed 3% annual cost of living increase for new employees. Instead, under the proposal, new employees would get a cost of living increase when revenue is available and tied to the annual inflation rate instead of the automatic 3% cost of living increase each year. The proposal would not make any changes to the guaranteed 3% annual cost of living increase for current employees and retirees.
Both Hosemann and Hopson said they do not believe it is legal to reduce the benefits for current employees and retirees.
“I don’t think you can do that,” Hosemann said. “I am not going to do it.”
No state has fewer public electric vehicle charging stations per capita than Mississippi.
With 145 total stations, the state has just under five for every 100,000 people, much lower than the national rate of 19 per 100,000, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy.
But with a boost of $50 million in federal funding, Mississippi plans to add about 30 new stations, which will be spread out along the state's busiest highways. Jessica Dilley, the director of Alternative Program Deliveries with the Mississippi Department of Transportation,told Mississippi Today that the agency projects that new charging stations will start showing up by 2026 or 2027.
The $50 million, which came from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is coming to the state over a five-year period. As of now, MDOT is still in its planning phase and hasn't spent any of the money.
Dilley said there was an adjustment period for the agency, versus its counterparts in other states that already had electric vehicle programs.
"There are some states nationwide that already had programs before the national program was established," she said. "We are not one of those states. So we spent time coordinating with the industry and educating ourselves... as well as coordinating with the utilities, the energy department, and communities throughout our state."
A map of potential locations for new electric vehicle charging stations, from MDOT's 2023 Deployment Plan.
As far as where the new stations will go, MDOT is planning to build between 25 to 30 new locations along I-10, I-20, I-22, I-55, I-59, I-69 and I-269. In order to meet federal requirements, stations have to be spaced no more than 50 miles apart from each other, and no more than a mile from the nearest interstate. The average cost of each new station, MDOT estimates, is between $500,000 and $1.5 million.
MDOT is issuing two rounds of request for proposals, Dilley said. The first round will be issued by the end of this year, with awards going out by mid-2025. Based on what's happened in other states, she said, it'll take anywhere from six months to a year after contracts are awarded until the stations are up and running.
There are a wide range of companies that may put in bids to run the new stations, Dilley added.
"What we've seen from adjacent states is everywhere from Waffle Houses putting in (bids) to Tesla, and everything in between," she said. "So it'll be up to whoever submits to apply for the funding to put in the station."
Companies that win bids will be responsible for 20% of the station costs, and MDOT will use its federal dollars to pay for the rest. Each station will have to have four DC fast chargers, each supplying 150 kilowatts at a time.
A map of current electric vehicle charging stations in Mississippi, from MDOT's 2023 Deployment Plan.
Mississippi's current charging stations, as shown in the map above, are spread out around the state, but most of them lack the capacity that the new stations will carry.
During the agency's public engagement, Dilley said MDOT received over 2,700 comments in the first year of the program. She said a "good amount" of the responses expressed "resistance" towards the program, because they were against electric vehicles in general or because the program is being funded publicly rather than privately. Other commenters were supportive, Dilley said, showing interest in reducing fuel emissions.
As part of the federal requirements for receiving the funds, Mississippi has to submit annual plans for building electric vehicle infrastructure, which the public can view on MDOT's website. Dilley said the agency will continue to engage with the public and post updates online.
Former state Rep. Alyce Clarke, the first Black woman to serve in the Mississippi Legislature, sat patiently in her motorized wheelchair Tuesday as her many feats and accomplishments were listed inside the Capitol.
But when it came time to unveil her portrait, the 84-year-old Clarke stood. Clarke had said it was important to have her portrait hanging in the Capitol so that “little boys and little girls who come to the Capitol could see someone who looks like them.” Perhaps Clarke wanted to make sure that those little boys and girls saw her standing next to her portrait.
When Clarke was elected to the Mississippi House in a 1985 special election, there were three women serving in the Legislature. She is the first woman to have her portrait hung in the Capitol. A bust of former Lt. Gov. Evelyn Gandy is located prominently in a Senate committee room.
Clarke’s portrait was painted by Jackson artist Ryan Mack. The portrait was based on a photograph from 1985 when she was first elected to the Mississippi House.
Mack said on Tuesday that Clarke’s years-long work to establish drug courts that provided treatment opportunities for people convicted of crimes made the invitation to paint the portrait an even bigger honor.
“It is better to treat people than to incarcerate,” Clarke said in the past. “And that is what the drug court does.”
The portrait was hung in the House Education Committee room. She was a member of the Education Committee for most of her tenure, including serving as vice chair, and worked for many years to boost public education across the state.
Clarke’s tenure in the Legislature ended when she chose not to run for reelection in 2019. Rep. Zakiya Summers, D-Jackson, said Clarke’s colleagues inquired of having her portrait placed in the Capitol. She said former House Speaker Philip Gunn supported the effort as did then-Speaker Pro Tem Jason White, who is now serving as speaker.
During Tuesday’s ceremony, current House Pro Tem Manly Barton, R-Moss Point, praised Clarke’s persistence in getting legislation passed. For years she filed bills to create a state lottery. When it was finally passed in 2018, Clarke’s colleagues chose to name the lottery in her honor.
Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, the House minority leader, said Clarke “effused power but did so with grace and persistence.”
Clarke, a nutritionist and educator, said during a 2019 interview on Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast that she was first encouraged by peers to run for Jackson City Council, but her supporters came to her at some point later and said, “We are no longer running for city council. We are running for the House.”
But she added, “The real person who made the decision was a lady in the Mississippi Delta. I called that person and she said, ‘Haven’t I always told you that you don’t know what you can do unless you try and you haven’t tried that.’ I said, ‘Thank you, Mama.’” At that point, she told her supporters she would run.
Clarke represented District 69 — one of the most densely populated districts in Mississippi. But she grew up in rural Humphreys County.
“I picked cotton, and I took pride,” she said, “I guess in making sure no male in the field could beat me picking cotton.”
Clarke went to Alcorn State on a scholarship and later ended up in Jackson, where for decades she has been an integral part of the community.
Her portrait will forever hang in the Mississippi Capitol.
More than 40 years after going coeducational, Mississippi University for Women will ask lawmakers this session to approve a new name: Wynbridge State University of Mississippi.
President Nora Miller asked the university community to support the new name Tuesday during a presentation in front of the university’s historic Poindexter Hall. It comes out of a multi-year process that saw the university engage a consulting group, conduct listening sessions and surveys, propose a name that flopped, apologize to alumni who felt excluded, then pivot to keeping “The W” brand it had decided to move away from.
“After all, it is ‘the W’ that bridges us all together,” Miller said to cheers.
Nora Miller has been named Acting President of Mississippi University for Women. Credit: Contributed by the Institutions of Higher Learning
The word “Wynbridge” is a portmanteau of an Old English rune for the letter “W” and the word “bridge,” which is meant to symbolize the university’s relationship to its history, Miller said. Though the new name is similar to ideas proposed by Chernoff Newman, the consulting group, it was created by alumni and faculty.
In Jackson, Sen. Charles Younger, R-Columbus, told Mississippi Today he filed a bill Tuesday to open the code sections pertaining to the university’s name. In the House, Rep. Kabir Karriem, D-Columbus, said he will co-sponsor a bill next week with the chair of the Colleges and Universities committee to support the university’s desired new name.
Younger said he likes Wynbridge State University of Mississippi compared to two other options the univeristy had floated — Wynbright and Welbright — and that the new name will support the university’s efforts to grow its male athletic teams.
“This is gonna make things better for the W,” he said.
Karriem said he thought the proposed name has a stately and literary quality that he feels everyone can get behind.
“Hopefully this will bring a new light to the W and increase enrollment,” he said.
If lawmakers approve the bill, the university’s new name would be effective July 1. The Commercial Dispatch reported MUW has budgeted $500,000 “for recruiting, advertising and marketing to prospective students.”
During the presentation, Keith Gaskin, the mayor of Columbus, said the new name is for the betterment of the university and his town and that he will be calling lawmakers to ask them to support Wynbridge State University of Mississippi.
“They have my unwavering support,” he said.
Samuel Garrie, the student government association president, said the new name demonstrates the university’s forward-looking approach.
The university was founded as the Industrial Institute and College for the Education of White Girls.
Laverne Greene-Leech, who was one of five Black students to integrate the university in 1966 when it was known as Mississippi State College for Women, said each of the past four names have symbolized progress.
“The mission did not change, the building did not change, just the name,” Greene-Leech said. “Change brings about progress, progress brings about change.”
MUW’s push for a new name is just one way the regional college is attempting to reposition itself to meet an uncertain moment for higher education in Mississippi while maintaining its mission to provide educational opportunities for women.
The number of high school graduates — and the rate at which they pursue higher education — is poised to fall, which will force increased competition among the state’s community colleges and universities. As a result of declining enrollment, tuition dollars will drop.
This demographic reality, called the “enrollment cliff,” will be tougher on regionals like MUW. In the last 10 years, enrollment has fallen from 2,366 to 1,933 in fall 2022, according to federal data. Since 2019, the tuition-dependent university has seen its operating deficit outpace state appropriations and its total cash flow dip into the red.
Lawmakers, aware of this shaky outlook, held a hearing on the enrollment cliff last month.
Alcorn State Univerity’s interim president appears to have at least some campus support if he wants the full appointment.
But if Mississippi’s public university governing board forgoes a national search and appoints Tracy Cook, it will mark the ninth time in 10 years that it has hired an internal candidate as a top leader.
One was a university president already. Some were acting or interim presidents when given the full appointment. Others had worked as commissioners within the Institutions of Higher Learning.
Tracy M. Cook is president f Alcorn State University. Credit: Courtesy of Alcorn State University
Cook, who was the vice president of student affairs when he was tapped as interim, did not respond to inquiries from Mississippi Today asking if he wants the job. But he has what it takes to bring life back to the waning campus, some students, faculty and alumni told members of the IHL Board of Trustees last week.
“The student body was given a questionnaire, and it was highly expressed that we would like Dr. Cook as our next president,” said Jordan Buck, the student government association president.
Some of IHL’s internal hires — like Nora Miller, who had served as Mississippi University for Women’s acting president, senior vice president for administration and chief financial officer before the board permanently appointed her the day of the listening sessions — have gone over without a hitch. But others have landed the board in hot water, sparking protests, accusations of favoritism and even bills to abolish IHL.
Just three presidents since 2014 have been hired from outside the state of Mississippi: Jeffrey Vitter at the University of Mississippi, Felecia Nave at Alcorn State and Daniel Ennis at Delta State University, who was appointed following a rare split vote. Nave, who IHL fired last year, was an Alcorn State alumnus.
Either way, IHL makes an unusually high number of internal hires for a public university system, said Judith Wilde, a George Mason University professor who studies presidential searches. She added internal hires are more common at private universities where presidents are often appointed on the strength of their connections.
“Having a friend in a high place who can help you is good for the candidate,” Wilde said. “I don’t know that it’s always the best for the institution.”
On the other hand, internal hires could mean that Mississippi’s universities are growing their own, which Bill Crawford, who served on the IHL board from 1992 to 2004, said is a sign of healthy institutions. He noted some of Mississippi’s most esteemed college presidentswere internal hires, like Aubrey Lucas, who was president of Delta State before he led USM.
What makes the difference, Crawford said, is proper vetting. In Mississippi and across the country, university presidents are among the best-paid public officials.
“What you’re trying to do as a board is find the best person, and whatever means you can use to come up with that is what you oughta use,” he said.
John Sewell, IHL’s spokesperson, wrote in an email that the board’s goal is to find the right person for the position who can be prepared to lead on day one.
“Decisions of the Board are always made in the best interest of the institution,” he wrote.
IHL has not released a timeline for the Alcorn State search. At the listening sessions, Alfred Rankins, the commissioner and former Alcorn State president, said the board would decide what kind of search to conduct after hearing the community’s feedback.
When trustees meet for IHL’s regular board meeting later this week, they could likely discuss how to proceed during the executive session. Typically following the listening sessions, the board hires a headhunting firm and convenes a search committee of students, faculty, staff and alumni.
But even if IHL decides to conduct a national search, the board can change its mind.
IHL is constitutionally empowered to hire the university presidents, and board policies give trustees the authority to cut a search short at any time. That’s what happened in 2022, when IHL suspended its search to hire USM’s interim president, Joe Paul, after he received support during the listening sessions.
Paul’s appointment was largely applauded by faculty — including ones who had criticized IHL for empaneling a search committee with no rank-and-file faculty voices.
But at Jackson State University, IHL’s decision to name its deputy commissioner, Marcus Thompson, as president last year despite conducting a full-fledged national search drew ire.
At Alcorn State, Rankins, who was serving as deputy commissioner and had been acting president of Mississippi Valley State University, was an internal hire when he was appointed in 2014.
The following year, Cook came to Alcorn State to be Rankins’ chief of staff. Till then, Cook, an alumnus and one of Alcorn State’s best-ever football players, had spent his career working in various administrative levels in Jefferson and Claiborne county schools.
In 2018, Cook was promoted to interim vice president for student affairs, a position that came with a $20,000 pay bump. That same year, after Rankins became the IHL commissioner, Cook served on the advisory committee for IHL’s search for Rankins’ replacement.
In 2019, Cook was named vice president of student affairs permanently. He also oversaw enrollment management. Total enrollment at Alcorn State has fallen from 3,523 in fall 2019 to 2,894 in fall 2023, according to IHL and federal data.
Like Rankins, Cook is a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, which may have more college presidents than any historically Black fraternity in the nation.
Editor’s note: This story contains graphic sexual content regarding allegations of sexual abuse.
Two women have reported to Hattiesburg police that counselor Wade Wicht sexually abused them during counseling sessions, but he may never face criminal charges because it’s not against the law in Mississippi for counselors to have sexual contact with their clients.
Wade Wicht Credit: Courtesy of Ramona Wicht
Wicht has already admitted to having sex with two women he counseled, a violation of the ethical code that prompted the loss of his license before the State Board of Examiners for Licensed Professional Counselors, which oversees and licenses counselors.
Wicht and his lawyers did not respond to repeated requests for comments regarding the women seeking criminal charges against him and the specific allegations against him.
Hattiesburg Police Det. LaShaunda Buckhalter said she could not comment because the case is under investigation.
More than half the states consider sex between mental health professionals and their patients a crime. Last year, the Mississippi House passed a bill that would have made it a crime for therapists, clergy, doctors and nurses to have sexual contact with those they treat or counsel.
But the bill died in the Senate Judiciary B Committee after some senators questioned the need for a law. If something like this happens, the church can “fire that person, and you don’t let that behavior continue,” said Committee Chairman Joey Fillingane.
Brad Eubank, a pastor for First Baptist Church in Petal who serves on the Southern Baptist Convention’s sex abuse task force, said this should be more than a firing offense — it should be a crime.
Brad Eubank, pastor of First Baptist Church in Petal, is pushing a bill this year in the Mississippi Legislature to get counselors and clergy added to those who can be charged with a crime if they sexually abuse those they counsel Credit: Courtesy of Brad Eubank
Such a law can help prevent professionals from “exploiting their power and authority to gain access to a vulnerable person,” he said. “It happens with counselors and unfortunately some pastors. It’s got to be stopped.”
Eubank, a survivor himself of sexual abuse, said the sexual battery statute in Mississippi needs reform. Under the current law, sexual assault has to involve penetration, or any such assault is only a misdemeanor.
“You can grab a woman and touch all of her body,” he said, and it only carries up to a $500 fine and six months in jail. “You’ve got to rape somebody, or it’s a simple assault.”
Heather Evans, whose Pennsylvania counseling firm specializes in treating sexual abuse by clergy and counselors, said clients typically share their darkest experiences. If a counselor makes calculated attempts to have sexual contact with them, she said, “That is abuse … It is always with the person who holds the power to protect and not harm, to respect but not abuse.”
The American Counseling Association has long banned such relationships: “Sexual and/or romantic counselor-client interactions or relationships with current clients, their romantic partners, or their family members are prohibited for a period of five years following the last professional contact.”
The women said Wicht told them his pornography addiction started as a young teen after he was introduced to Playboy magazines at a friend’s home, and he later read the Kama Sutra, an ancient manuscript that gained popularity for its description of sexual positions.
Hattiesburg High School classmate Chami Kane recalled a time when Wicht told friends and fellow soccer players that he wanted them to see his favorite movie. He showed them “Deliverance,” which features a brutal rape scene.
Kane said Wicht did it to shock them, and they were indeed shocked.
Wicht went on to Belhaven College, where he graduated in 1997 with a degree in psychology. It was at that point that he married his first wife and moved to the St. Louis area.Two years later, he received a master’s in counseling from Covenant Theological Seminary there.
After graduating, Wicht started a job at a nearby mental health facility. It was there he shadowed a clinician named Ramona, who would become his second wife.
Ramona told Mississippi Today that Wicht pursued her, told her that his marriage was dead and that he was getting a divorce — only for her to learn later that wasn’t true.
Ramona Wicht Credit: Courtesy of Ramona Wicht
Three years later, the couple married. They remained in St. Louis and later moved to Hattiesburg, where Wicht’s roots run deep. The couple returned to the church his family had attended for generations, The First Presbyterian Church. Wicht became a deacon, and Ramona led a weekly Bible study group for women.
Wicht worked as a director at Pine Grove Behavioral and Addiction Services, which treats sex addiction. He was working there in 2010 when golfer Tiger Woods came for treatment.
Late one night, Ramona walked into the family room and discovered him watching porn, she said. “I hoped and prayed he no longer struggled with his former addictions. Looking back, it seems that working with sex addicts was fueling that flame.”
After leaving Pine Grove, Wicht ran a Louisiana company and then worked for Camellia Home Health and Hospice in Hattiesburg.
In 2015, he started a Christian counseling center, The Cornerstone Group, for mental health services in Hattiesburg with Ramona, who handled Cornerstone’s coaching as well as home-schooling their four children.
Shortly after Cornerstone opened, Wicht began a sexual relationship with a client, according to a counselors’ licensing board order.
Asked about this, Ramona said Wicht framed it to her as an angry husband had complained to the board and was going to sue “and take away everything you have.” She went into a “preserve my family mode,” she said. “I was a Christian woman, and I was going to fight for my marriage.”
Wicht never told his wife or his staff that his license previously expired. It wasn’t until 2018 that Wicht renewed his license.
Despite counseling for three years without a license, the board renewed his license without any fines or suspension.
LeeAnn Mordecai, executive director for the counselors’ licensing board, said the board’s orders are the only comments that she and the board can make about Wicht’s cases.
In 2019, Kimberly Cuellar, then 26, said she went to see the 44-year-old Wicht for help because of all the trauma she had suffered in a cult and an abusive relationship.
The sessions worsened her trauma, and she wound up writing a suicide note. She drank some wine to relax and “got very drunk instead, which definitely saved me,” she said.
She said she texted Wicht, who kept her on the phone for the next three hours instead of calling 911. “He spent the night in my house.”
In her next sessions with Wicht, they talked about treatment. “He’s very good at making you feel that he cares so much,” she said. “Even my own family had cut me off. I was desperate for somebody to care.”
As a Christian counselor, Wicht ended sessions in prayer. Each time, he scooted his chair closer, she said. “Then he put his hand on my leg.”
Kimberly Cuellar says her journey dealing with Wade Wicht has taught her, more than ever, about God’s amazing grace. Credit: Jerry Mitchell/Mississippi Today
She said she told him she couldn’t afford all these sessions. He offered a trade: free counseling in exchange for her participation in research for a sex addiction book he was writing.
The next session, he asked her to lay on the floor, and after she did, he pulled down her pants and digitally penetrated her without her consent, claiming it was for his research, she told police.
“When you … started touching me, molesting me, I couldn’t believe it,” she wrote in text exchanges she shared with Mississippi Today. “It went on for so long. I could barely breathe.”
She wrote that she froze, just as she had during previous sexual trauma and spent the night on a park bench, where she was nearly kidnapped. Despite that, “I continued to trust you like an idiot.”
He pushed her to move to Hattiesburg, where she could receive intensive outpatient treatment. After arriving, a single mother with no support system, she suffered a panic attack, “memories of sexual abuse coming back to me,” she wrote. “But what did you do? After you found me balled up in the corner of the room, you used the opportunity to make sexual advances on me. To describe in detail what you wanted to do to me sexually, to help me to my bed and touch me again without asking. I froze again.”
In the next session, she said he continued the sexual touching, this time making her wear a blindfold. “He told me, ‘This is therapeutic to know what you like,’” she said. “Then it turned into, ‘I want to show you what real love is.’”
He became frustrated when she didn’t climax, she said. “I told him, ‘I feel very uncomfortable with this because I don’t have any connection with you.’”
He suggested they work on such a connection and that sex would help her heal, she said. “I was like a frog in the pot, slowly boiling.”
On May 21, 2021, the licensing board held a hearing on allegations from a client who said that Wicht had retaliated after she rejected him.
The woman, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, told Mississippi Today that, in sessions spanning several years, she grew uncomfortable with Wicht’s “inappropriate” compliments on her looks and “creepy” hugs, including one where he held her tightly around her waist and wouldn’t let go.
The woman, who is also a licensed professional counselor, told Mississippi Today that Wicht originally told her that her husband was so dangerous that she needed to leave the state. But after she told him later that she wanted to see a different counselor, she said he retaliated by taking her husband’s side in a custody battle, raising questions about her “moral judgments and mood stability.”
In a letter, Wicht told the judge she suffered from “borderline personality traits” — a claim she said he never mentioned before, a claim her subsequent therapist called ludicrous.
During her discussion with the board, she questioned why Wicht was allowed to counsel her since he didn’t have a license when he started counseling her in 2016 or 2017. The board sided with Wicht.
“When the person you confided in and trusted with the pain and the abuse you and your children were living with turns around to make you look like the unfit parent,” she said, “you no longer trust anyone.”
She supports legislation to require videotaping in the mental health setting, she said. “It is so easy to manipulate clients because they are viewed as being mentally and emotionally inferior to the therapist.”
On Nov. 5, 2021, Belhaven College honored Wicht with an Alumni Award as a “servant leader entrepreneur who … demonstrates a commitment to ethical leadership in the marketplace.”
In his bio, he wrote that the Cornerstone Group provided “mental health services and is passionate about equipping others to live the life God intended.”
In 2022, the licensing board received complaints that alleged Wicht had sex with Cuellar and another woman who had been a client.
“What I did was wrong, and I disclosed this behavior to my wife just two weeks ago,” he wrote in a letter to the board. “I have also disclosed to my family, church, and counseling staff.”
Chami Kane, who grew up with Wicht and later worked as a counselor at Cornerstone, said Wicht felt like after he shared this, “Everybody should be OK. Now let’s all be friends again.”
Chami Kane Credit: Courtesy of Ramona Wicht
She wrote him an email, which she shared with Mississippi Today, about something that had been bothering her. One day when she walked into the clinic, the front lights were off. When she saw Wicht, he led her into his wife’s office where he had been. There Kane said she saw a pair of his underwear on the desk, which he snatched up and stuffed into his pocket.
“You got on to me for not letting you know I was coming,” she wrote. “I know I almost caught you (with a client).”
He never responded to her email, she said. “I felt betrayed and angry and heartbroken. I also worried about his soul.”
In April 2022, Wicht wrote a letter, admitting to “moral failures and ethical violations in my personal and professional life.” In a June 9, 2022, order, the board gave him the ability to reapply for his license in a year.
He told the board that Kimberly Cuellar was a former client when he began to have sex with her and that he had simply failed to wait the required five-year period.
She said this wasn’t true and that he asked her to repeat this lie to the board. After he sexually abused her in sessions, he began to have sex with her in August 2019 during a trip to a Gulf Coast casino, she said. She shared an Aug. 21, 2019, photo of her with Wicht outside the casino as proof.
For the next several months, he continued to conduct therapy sessions with her, and he continued to have sex with her, she said.
Wicht told the board, his staff and his family that his relationship with Cuellar had ended, but she said it never stopped. In fact, she said he had told her that he was divorcing his wife to be with her.
When she discovered that was a lie, Cuellar said she packed up all she owned in a truck and left Hattiesburg for Louisiana.
Despite the distance, she said she remained under his spell. He made her report on all her therapy sessions and made her promise she wouldn’t tell the counselor about him, she said.
In her December 2022 session, she broke down and told her therapist about Wicht, she said. “She told me, ‘Oh, my gosh, you really need to leave.’ He made me fire her, and I did.”
By March 2023, she had repaired her family relationships, moved in with her mother and cut off her sexual relationship with Wicht, telling him that the only way they could have sex again would be if they were married.
Months later, he visited. That night at her mother’s home, she said she told him she was exhausted and going straight to sleep, only to wake up to “him on top of me.”
In text message exchanges, which she shared with Mississippi Today, she told him she felt “very violated” and “if I was awake, you know I would have not said yes to that.”
He responded, “Omgoodness, what??!! That is horrific!!! I am so incredibly sorry that’s how you experienced it. … What you’re accusing me of is criminal, Kimberly!”
“You moved my shorts, and you absolutely tried to get inside me,” she texted him.
“I touched you with my fingers, and I was touching myself,” he responded. “That’s what went on. I was NOT trying to have sex with you while you were sleeping.”
She told him “no” multiple times and, when he refused to stop, she grabbed him, she wrote. “Did you really stop? Not really. You then touched me without consent while you ejaculated on my body after all the no’s I had given. Attempted rape? Absolutely.”
Months later, she texted him, “I hear you’re claiming you’ve changed. … That’s interesting. I hope it’s true.”
He texted her back, “Thank you for reaching out and making a way for God to be glorified through repentance and reconciliation. … I’ve been praying for an opportunity to communicate with you again and started a letter as the first step in making full amends to you, Kimberly.”
The letter, she said, never arrived.
Kimberly Cuellar’s drawings after she started therapy with Wade Wicht. She says she felt like screaming Credit: Courtesy of Kimberly Cuellar
She had long made excuses for his behavior, but now he would be “exposed for the disgusting person you really are,” she texted him. “Do you need more stories? I have them. I have a lot of them.”
One time he spiked her drink, and “I woke up the next morning with only bits and pieces of my memory of the night,” she texted. “I asked you if you had done something to my drink, because I knew one drink would not have gotten me drunk, and you said you had, laughing it off. I was in pain, because you had done anal [sex] without consent.”
She texted him that he was “as bad or worse than every other man who has abused me. I came to you for help, and you used me for yourself. … I’m just letting you know now you didn’t win. I’m not yours, and I’ll never be yours.”
On Nov. 9, she drove to the Hattiesburg Police Department and told a detective what Wicht had done to her, and she is considering filing charges against him for attempted rape as well.“What I want is for him to be held responsible,” she said. “I don’t want this to happen to anyone ever again.”
Another woman also gave a statement to Hattiesburg police about what Wicht had done to her. Mississippi Today does not identify individuals alleging sexual assault or abuse unless they choose to do so.
In 2021, she and her then-husband went to see Wicht for marriage counseling. Instead of helping the couple draw closer, “He drove a wedge between us,” she said.
Her insurance didn’t cover the counseling, she said, and he offered to let her exchange a free membership to her family’s business. She agreed.
Her past made her an easy target, she said. She was a naïve 17-year-old when a teacher groomed her for months before sexually assaulting her, but her family didn’t want her to pursue charges, she said. “For 20 years, I literally wore a scarlet letter, blaming it on myself.”
To this day, she finds herself tying a shirt or jacket around her waist, she said. “I grew up Southern Baptist. God forbid you have a cute figure. There’s a lot of shame for sexual abuse victims.”
From the start, Wicht’s conversations steered to the sexual. After she mentioned her personal training, she said he talked about the size of her breasts and then asked her if she had implants.
She found such talk odd, but she presumed he knew best as a professional counselor, she said.
When she shared with Wicht the story of her sexual assault, she said he began to ask “very specific details of how it happened, which I thought was very strange. He even asked me if I bled.”
She said she found it difficult to share, and she joked that a drink would help her relax. The next thing she knew, she said, he had poured drinks for both of them — a habit he continued.
At the end of the session, Wicht asked for a hug, and she told him no, she said. He told her that being able to accept a hug was part of her healing, she said.
She finally began hugging him, she said.
Over time, she began to trust Wicht and rely on his advice on how she could improve her marriage. He seemed wise and professional. He listened well and spent more and more time with her.
The more time they spent together, the more she said she felt like he understood her. She felt like he really cared.
Months later, she said she told Wicht that she feared she was experiencing transference — that is, redirecting her feelings from her husband to Wicht. “I didn’t know what I needed to do.”
Instead of guiding her to another therapist, she said he reassured her that such transference “could be beneficial to the process.”
In the sessions that followed, she said he had her stand up and turn around, and he hugged her from behind. He told her that hugging like this was therapeutic.
Claiming he was helping her, he began putting his hand on her leg and telling her that she needed to learn to say no, she said. With each session, he moved his hand higher up her leg, she said. “He groomed the hell out of me. I can see it now. I couldn’t see it then.”
After having her talk about her sex life, she said he insisted to her that she was a sex addict and urged her to stop having sex with her husband.
His advice shocked her, she said, because she didn’t believe she was a sex addict. She rejected his talk that she needed to go somewhere to get treatment.
When he wasn’t satisfied that she was sharing all of the details on what she liked sexually, he urged her to masturbate so he could observe, she told police.
He had her stand up again, she told police. “He would hug me from behind while caressing my breasts and body. This progressed to him putting his hands inside my pants.”
He preyed on her, only to end their sessions in prayer, she said. “I finally got the courage to tell him to stop. I thought it was especially twisted for him to pray considering what he was doing.”
After sickness in her family and her own health struggles, she felt emotionally spent. “I was especially low,” she told police. “I was crying uncontrollably.”
She called Wicht for help, and he asked her to come into the office.
In past sessions, he had asked her to remove her clothes, she said. She had refused each time.
This time, she broke down and gave in to his demands. “I cried the whole time,” she said. “That’s the control that counselors have over your psyche and emotions.”
He put a blindfold on her, made her lie on her stomach and spread her bottom cheeks, and “he proceeded to penetrate me with his fingers,” she told police.
When he finished, “He held me and acted as if it had been a caring moment,” she told police. “That was the last time he touched me.”
Throughout his abuse, she told police, “He would remind me I could never in my life breathe a word of it. Said someone could die or be killed if I did. This was triggering as my abuser from teen years threatened to kill himself if I told anyone.”
What he did to her so traumatized her that thoughts of self-harm flooded her mind, she said. To combat this, she posted the suicide prevention hotline number on her wall and turned her closet into a prayer “war room,” where she sometimes slept.
To recover from this devastation, she paid $20,000 to be part of a therapeutic program out of Canada, she said. “I was afraid to go anywhere in the U.S. because I knew they would have to report it.”
She said she was so emotionally devastated at the time that it is only now, after her healing has begun, that she feels able to pursue possible criminal charges, despite the lack of a Mississippi law dealing with counselors.
It’s bad enough for a trusted person to exploit you, but when it’s a counselor, who knows so many intimate details about your life, “It rapes every part of your soul and mind,” she said. “It gets every piece of you.”
Nothing happened to the teacher who abused her as a teen, and he went on to sexually assault other girls, she said. She wants to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen with Wicht, she said, because “sexual abuse victims have had their voices taken.”
In April 2022, Wicht’s wife, Ramona, learned that “my husband of 20 years had been living a double life,” she told the pastors and elders of First Presbyterian Church, where is no longer a deacon. (Church officials declined to discuss the matter.)
Their marriage crumbled as she “uncovered layers of lies and betrayals,” she wrote. When she made him open the family safe, she expected to see stacks of cash. Instead, she saw dozens of sex toys and condoms, she said, and she had previously spotted a box with a blowup sex doll.
A letter she received from an accountant, which she shared with Mississippi Today, detailed how Wicht hadn’t completed personal or business taxes with the firm for seven years, and she wrote how he had also failed to pay employees, cut corners and done “the bare minimum for others while indulging himself.”
She was just discovering some of his reckless spending, including more than $21,000 he had spent on a single video game, she wrote.
Wicht isn’t being required to pay child support though she is the one 90% of the time caring for their four children (one of whom has special needs) and paying all the bills, she wrote. He has visitation rights, and the judge has yet to make a final decision on custody.
“I can’t even make ends meet on a monthly basis,” Ramona wrote. “We currently live in a dilapidated home while Wade enjoys a $2,400-a-month rental home. To make matters worse, I have been required to pay over $10,000 for counseling sessions to help Wade’s failing relationships with the children.”
She told Mississippi Today that she’s “deeply grieved by the sin I’ve seen, but I am grateful for the other victims who, like me, have finally found their voices. Moving forward, my prayer is for redemption, restoration and swift justice in the midst of this heartbreaking situation.”
Where to turn if you need help
Experts say if you or someone you know has been emotionally or sexually abused in therapy sessions, you need to seek help.
They recommend victims and survivors of sexual abuse seek therapy from a trusted and highly recommended expert in such healing as well as the advice of a lawyer before making any legal decisions.
The book “Psychotherapists’ Sexual Involvement with Clients” cites these as possible options:
File a lawsuit for damages
File a licensure complaint
File a criminal charge
File a complaint with a professional association
Notify the employer, agency director, or church hierarchy (n the case of clergy practicing psychotherapy)
