Where the Sheriff Is King, These Women Say He Coerced Them Into Sex

In 2012, three months after Eddie Scott turned sheriff of Clay County, Miss., a declare by a lady he had helped put behind bars threatened to tarnish his earliest days in workplace.

The lady stated in an April court docket submitting that, whereas chief deputy lower than three years earlier, he had coerced her right into a sexual relationship after she was arrested. Promising to make use of his affect of their rural neighborhood to maintain her out of jail, she stated, the lawman drove her to a hog farm to have intercourse in his patrol automobile on a minimum of 5 events.

She laid out her allegations in state circuit court docket in October 2012 and requested a choose to overturn her jail sentence. To again up her story, the 26-year-old confirmed suggestive letters with a return deal with of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office and signed by then-Chief Deputy Scott, who was 47.

“Hey Sexy,” he wrote to her in jail 9 months earlier than his election to the highest job. “Got my blood pumping hard after reading the last two letters. Can’t stop thinking of how tight it is. I want all of that and more if you can.”

The revelations might have led to an inner investigation, a felony inquiry or a public reckoning for the newly put in sheriff. Instead, highly effective officers in Clay County took no motion.

Judge Jim Kitchens dominated towards the girl. Sheriff Scott’s predecessor, Laddie Huffman, had recognized of the allegations earlier than retiring however didn’t report them to state or federal regulation enforcement businesses. There isn’t any report of any inner investigation or disciplinary evaluation.

The court docket file for the girl’s case — the one public report of the allegations — went lacking on the Clay County Courthouse, probably for years. It was positioned within the unsuitable submitting cupboard, misplaced amongst lots of of instances, till reporters pressed for it this summer time whereas investigating different allegations towards Sheriff Scott.

In interviews, Sheriff Scott wouldn’t straight reply whether or not he had ever had intercourse with the girl. When requested about his relationship along with her, he referred to as it a “mistake.” He denied coercing her.

“What she didn’t tell was, she was coming up to the office with her tits hanging out,” he stated. “I never put myself in that position anymore.”

But an investigation by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today, which included dozens of interviews and a evaluation of court docket data and completely obtained inner paperwork, discovered that in his 11 years in workplace, Sheriff Scott has repeatedly been accused of utilizing the ability of his place to harass ladies, coerce them into intercourse and retaliate towards those that criticize him or allege abuse.

In rural communities like Clay County — dominated by farmland and financial hardship — some sheriffs rule like kings. They can arrest anybody they select, smear reputations and hand out reprieves and different favors. They have monumental latitude to carry individuals in jail so long as they please and so they reply to nobody, sometimes going through little press or prosecutorial scrutiny.

Three months in the past, The Times and Mississippi Today informed the story of one other sheriff’s workplace, lower than 40 miles away. Former Noxubee County Sheriff Terry Grassaree rose within the ranks of his Mississippi division and saved his elected workplace for years regardless of related accusations of abuse. He was voted out in 2019 and now faces federal fees of bribery.

But in Clay County, Sheriff Scott stays in energy even after repeated allegations of misconduct.

An area lady stated the sheriff had repeatedly compelled her into intercourse throughout her eight months in jail beginning in 2017. When she started telling individuals after her launch, she stated, a sheriff’s deputy organized to have medication planted in her automobile — an allegation corroborated by a secretly recorded dialog with a person who stated he had planted them.

In a court docket submitting final 12 months, a person claimed that Sheriff Scott had pursued a sexual relationship along with his girlfriend and helped her keep away from a prolonged jail sentence when the couple’s baby died in 2019 with meth in his system. Prosecutors charged the dad and mom with baby neglect. While prosecutors sought solely probation within the mom’s case, they supplied the daddy a plea deal that referred to as for 10 years in jail.

Also final 12 months, a lady who as soon as labored for the sheriff sued him, claiming he had subjected her to months of sexual harassment, together with texts commenting on her breasts. After she filed her grievance, Sheriff Scott fired her boyfriend, a captain within the workplace.

At least 5 individuals who accused the sheriff of misconduct, or who had been potential witnesses within the instances, stated he had retaliated towards them, efforts they imagine had been supposed to silence them or discredit their allegations.

In 2021, the F.B.I. started investigating allegations towards the sheriff. They interviewed almost a dozen witnesses, together with Sheriff Scott and employees members in his workplace. No fees have been filed.

Officials conversant in the allegations and the way they’ve been investigated, together with federal prosecutors, declined to remark. Sheriff Huffman, citing poor well being, stated he didn’t keep in mind any of the allegations. Judge Kitchens didn’t reply to a request for remark.

In a number of interviews, together with one on digital camera with reporters, Sheriff Scott, now 58, has denied harassing ladies, coercing them into intercourse or retaliating towards anybody. He stated he has needed to defend his fame from “con artists” and “drug users” who had been inventing accusations to keep away from jail time or by some means profit financially.

The sheriff stated he was the sufferer in all of this, and that he had been beneath assault. “It was a coordinated hit on me,” he stated.

A Popular Figure

Sheriff Scott and his siblings grew up milking cows on their household farm in Montpelier, Miss., a rural crossroads alongside Highway 46 marked by a single gasoline station and the Baptist church his household attended.

After highschool, he married, had youngsters and labored at Bryan Foods, a meat processing firm and one of many space’s greatest employers. Then he was referred to as to serve on a Clay County grand jury and have become fascinated with police work, he stated.

In 1999, he turned a full-time deputy for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office. He fought the drug commerce simply as meth was rising because the scourge of rural America and he finally turned an investigator, answerable for fixing the county’s occasional murders. He rose to chief deputy, second in command to Sheriff Huffman.

The logical inheritor when Sheriff Huffman retired, he gained his first election in 2011 and took workplace the following 12 months.

Today, Sheriff Scott is considered one of Clay County’s hottest figures and the face of space regulation enforcement. His brother, Terry, is listed as senior investigator on the Clay County Sheriff’s Office web site; his son James serves on the Mississippi Highway Patrol’s SWAT crew; and his sister, Tanya, has labored because the nurse for the county jail.

On the 137-acre unfold the place his household as soon as raised cows, Sheriff Scott hosts fish fries and crawfish boils, the place he swaps tales and swigs chilly beer with fellow regulation enforcement officers and among the county’s strongest officers.

Sheriff Scott has lined his workplace partitions with photographs of John Wayne, whom the sheriff considers his hero. The actor and the characters he performed symbolize all the pieces good and first rate in America, Sheriff Scott stated. “They don’t build them like him anymore.”

In his workplace, he retains a Christmas card from former President Donald J. Trump, whom he has met a number of occasions. Beside it’s a Bible that, he stated, reminds him of his childhood.

“Back when we were kids, we all went to church and learned the difference between right and wrong,” he stated. “And we’re not seeing that now.”

A New Allegation

Sheriff Scott’s public persona clashes with what a lady named Amber Jones says she skilled after she failed three drug assessments and was arrested for violating probation in May 2017.

That summer time, Ms. Jones, then 21, was referred to as down from her cell on the Clay County Detention Center to the sheriff’s workplace, the place Sheriff Scott requested if she want to assist out submitting paperwork.

She had spent weeks in a grimy jail cell with out seeing the solar, she recalled. She informed him sure and have become a trusty, an inmate with particular privileges, working for the jail data administrator, Patty Stange.

One day within the workplace, Ms. Jones recalled, Sheriff Scott held out a hand to her and stated, “If you take this splinter out of my finger, I’ll give you an eight-hour home pass.”

Desperate to see her household, she agreed, and some days later, the sheriff himself checked her out of jail to take her house, she stated. A mile down the highway, the sheriff stopped the automobile by a small brick home and informed her she needed to change out of her jail garments.

Ms. Jones stated she felt uneasy because the sheriff led her inside, via a bed room to a toilet. He gave her a T-shirt and left her alone to alter.

But he finally returned and got here up behind her, Ms. Jones recalled, touching her and commenting on her tattoos. Without one other phrase, the sheriff pulled her to the mattress and compelled her to have intercourse, she stated.

Ms. Jones stated she felt that she had no alternative — he was the sheriff. “I felt like I was worthless, like I didn’t have any control over my own body,” she stated. “There was nothing I could do to stop it.”

After she visited her brother and returned to jail, she stated, the sheriff referred to as her to his workplace and informed her she didn’t have to fret about getting pregnant as a result of he had been “fixed.”

For the remainder of Ms. Jones’s eight months in jail, this sample continued, she stated: Sheriff Scott supplied her house passes to rearrange sexual encounters.

Her accusations had been detailed in a federal lawsuit filed final 12 months by a former worker of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, Caitlyn Wilson. The swimsuit claims that Sheriff Scott sexually harassed Ms. Wilson, and it cites Ms. Jones’s allegations as proof of the sheriff’s mistreatment of girls. In sworn testimony final month, Sheriff Scott declined to say whether or not he had ever had intercourse with Ms. Jones, citing his Fifth Amendment proper to keep away from self-incrimination. The case is ready for trial subsequent 12 months.

In interviews for this text, Sheriff Scott denied taking Ms. Jones out of jail or having sexual contact along with her. “Amber is a sweet, likable girl on the face,” he stated. “But we learned that she’s one of the biggest con artists that ever walked the face of the earth.”

Had he had taken her out of the jail, he stated, their exit would have been recorded on surveillance video and sign-out sheets. When reporters requested to evaluation such supplies, Sheriff Scott stated the pc system that logged inmates’ whereabouts was damaged.

Sign-out sheets had been saved amongst hundreds of pages of jail data stacked in lopsided piles on an workplace flooring. A evaluation of the one data out there revealed that Ms. Jones had obtained a minimum of one house cross.

Ms. Jones’s description of the home the place she stated the sheriff took her for intercourse matches that of a spot Sheriff Scott stated he used for storage: a one-story brick house a few mile from the jail. Sheriff Scott stated it was broadly recognized that he used the home and that plenty of individuals let themselves out and in utilizing a key he saved beneath the doormat.

Ms. Jones shared account data displaying that previous midnight on Jan. 25, every week after she left jail, Sheriff Scott despatched her a pal request on Snapchat, the disappearing-photo app. She additionally shared copies of textual content messages between them.

In the texts, Sheriff Scott requested Ms. Jones for “updates,” his code for nude images, she stated. She felt compelled to ship them, she stated, as a result of her brother was in jail for drug possession.

In one textual content change from 2019, Ms. Jones requested the sheriff if he had heard something about her felony report being expunged. A “good update” would “help me remember,” he replied, including a smiling emoji. In one other change, the sheriff wrote that Ms. Jones owed him an “update” and despatched her an emoji with a tongue protruding.

Sheriff Scott stated he couldn’t keep in mind what he had meant by “update,” however denied that it concerned nude footage.

The solely images he obtained from Ms. Jones over Snapchat, he stated, had been “body shots” that he had requested from her as a part of an investigation into jail inmates tattooing each other. Sheriff Scott stated he had offered these images to the F.B.I.

Sheriff Scott posed the ladies collectively and snapped a photograph from behind, in keeping with Ms. Jones. The different lady, visibly upset, bolted for the toilet, she stated.

A couple of minutes later, Ms. Jones stated she heard a knock on the door: It was Ms. Stange, the jail data administrator.

Ms. Stange stated in a press release that she drove the ladies again from the home to the jail and so they appeared in good spirits. She stated she had no information of “any sexual misconduct of Sheriff Scott with any female inmates.”

The second lady declined to remark. But in a Facebook put up final 12 months, she appeared to verify that she had been current for the image. Replying to a put up by Ms. Jones describing the occasions, the girl recalled that she had stated, “Oh, hell no,” and walked out of the room.

When requested about this beneath oath, Sheriff Scott took the Fifth.

‘I Knew I Was Being Set Up’

For years after her launch from jail, Ms. Jones stated she tried to place these abuses behind her. She stopped getting messages from the sheriff after blocking his quantity close to the start of 2020, she stated.

Then, in September 2021, a lady who had labored for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office got here ahead with new accusations that threatened to carry consideration to years of alleged sexual misconduct by Sheriff Scott.

Caitlyn Wilson, a former investigative assistant who alleged sexual harassment, filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission grievance that stated Sheriff Scott had made sexual advances towards her and threatened to fireside her after she rebuked him. She made reference to different ladies whose related experiences had not but been made public.

“My situation has been exacerbated,” her grievance stated, citing a number of ladies both in jail or employed by the county who had “made claims that the Sheriff was having sex with them. It appears to be well-known within the County that the Sheriff suffers from a sexual addiction, and this sexual addiction has affected my work performance and is causing me extreme fear and anxiety.”

The E.E.O.C. didn’t weigh in on the deserves of Ms. Wilson’s grievance, however decided she had the suitable to sue.

In the lawsuit she filed in May 2022, Ms. Wilson described a gaggle chat during which Sheriff Scott had despatched a number of staff a gentle stream of sexually specific textual content messages.

His messages, reviewed by reporters, referred to ladies as “hookers,” “heifers” and “hos.” In one textual content, the sheriff recommended Ms. Wilson and Ms. Stange ought to “tag team” to offer him oral intercourse. In others, he referred to as himself a stallion and stated ladies “liked to be hammered.”

Pictures the sheriff despatched, which he referred to as “humorous memes on the humor channel” beneath oath as a part of the lawsuit, in contrast ladies to canines that wanted to be skilled and joked about date rape.

Ms. Wilson stated she determined to file her grievance after Sheriff Scott rubbed his crotch towards her as he walked previous her in the future within the workplace. “I felt very violated,” she stated in an interview. “I was just so shocked and surprised because he was my boss.”

Sheriff Scott denied touching Ms. Wilson inappropriately, saying he was working a excessive fever that day. “I was as sick as a dog,” he stated. “Grabbing a woman was the last thing on my mind.”

He informed reporters that none of his texts included sexual content material and stated beneath oath that anybody within the group chat might have stopped taking part at any time.

When Ms. Wilson filed her grievance, Sheriff Scott assigned considered one of his personal deputies to research. The last report concluded that the allegations had been “unsubstantiated and punitive” and dismissed Sheriff Scott’s texts as grownup humor shared amongst prepared members.

As the deputy investigated, Ms. Wilson stated, she discovered herself more and more remoted at work. She was barred from carrying her gun on the workplace and informed to eat lunch at her desk. Most of her co-workers stopped speaking to her, she stated.

In December 2021, three months after Ms. Wilson filed her preliminary grievance, Sheriff Scott suspended her then-boyfriend, Jeremy Bell, a captain who had labored within the workplace for 5 years. According to a personnel report signed by Sheriff Scott, Mr. Bell had violated division coverage by driving his patrol automobile outdoors of Clay County to go to Ms. Wilson’s home in a neighboring city. He was fired two days after Christmas.

It was round this time that Ms. Jones, who had not heard from Sheriff Scott for months, discovered herself beneath the scrutiny of native regulation enforcement once more, she stated.

Several weeks after Ms. Wilson submitted her grievance citing allegations that ladies within the jail had been compelled to have intercourse with Sheriff Scott, Ms. Jones was pulled over by a narcotics officer from West Point, a city of about 10,000 individuals in Clay County.

The officer found a bag of diabetic needles crammed with meth beneath her passenger seat and arrested her. Ms. Jones believes the medication had been planted there.

“I knew I was being set up,” she stated.

Frustrated and going through time behind bars, Ms. Jones determined two months later to put up on a Facebook web page referred to as Mississippi Corruption, the place she detailed for the primary time her allegations towards the sheriff.

“I was fixing to go to prison for a really long time for something that I didn’t even do, just because he was mad over his mistakes, over things that he had done,” she stated.

Just a few months later, in April 2022, Ms. Jones obtained a video from her pal Madison Ray, she stated. Ms. Ray stated she had secretly recorded a dialog with Joshua Fulgham, an area diabetic man with prior drug arrests, as a result of she suspected somebody had planted the medication whereas they had been all hanging out the evening earlier than Ms. Jones’s arrest.

The recording, on Ms. Ray’s cellphone, captures him explaining how and why he positioned the medication in Ms. Jones’s automobile. “I put dope under that seat like Kyle told me to,” he says. “I didn’t even have to use mine. Kyle gave it to me.”

According to Ms. Wilson’s lawsuit, Mr. Fulgham is referring to Deputy Kyle Eaves, who used to work for Sheriff Scott. “The apparent purpose of Deputy Sheriff Eaves causing drugs to be planted upon Jones is to intimidate Jones or to cause her to be arrested so that she will lack credibility in claiming an involuntary sexual relationship with Defendant Scott,” the grievance states.

After the video unfold round city, Mr. Fulgham was arrested on drug possession fees, taken to the jail and made a trusty. About six months later, he made a video on the Clay County jail and had it posted on Facebook. He accused Ms. Jones of being a liar out to get Sheriff Scott, however by no means recanted his earlier statements.

“She needs help and rehab, just like me,” Mr. Fulgham stated within the video, “and she needs to leave the sheriff alone.”

The sheriff despatched a duplicate of the video to reporters and pointed to it as proof that Ms. Jones and others had been mendacity. “Seems like their plan [is] coming to light,” he stated.

Neither Mr. Fulgham nor Mr. Eaves responded to requests for remark.

About six months after the video was made, one other potential witness in Ms. Jones’s case modified his story too.

Her former boyfriend, Edward Adam Todd, had been arrested by Clay County deputies and was going through as much as 50 years in jail for 2 housebreaking fees.

After initially backing up Ms. Jones’s allegations, Mr. Todd later informed investigators that he had lied to get the sheriff in hassle, in keeping with transcripts of his April sentencing listening to.

The court docket transcript reveals that Judge Kitchens praised Mr. Todd for his change of coronary heart, saying his statements “cleared a local member of law enforcement that had been accused of something that probably turns out that was not true.”

At the listening to, the prosecutor recommended a seven-year jail sentence for Mr. Todd, citing his assist to regulation enforcement. Judge Kitchens additional decreased his sentence, slicing it to 4 years.

Instead of being transferred to jail to serve his sentence, Mr. Todd has remained on the Clay County jail, the place he couldn’t instantly be reached for remark.

Back on the Ballot

Sheriff Scott believes that he might be vindicated and that voters will see via the allegations to re-elect him within the deciding Democratic major election on Aug. 8.

He has gained his earlier elections simply. But this time, he faces an sudden opponent who’s an skilled regulation enforcement officer in Clay County: his personal chief deputy, Ramirez Williams.

In February, Chief Deputy Williams introduced his run for sheriff. The subsequent month, Sheriff Scott demoted him to work the graveyard shift as a jailer.

When requested if Mr. Williams’s candidacy performed a task in his demotion, the sheriff replied, “Not necessarily,” and declined to remark additional.

Sheriff Scott insists he’ll go away workplace on his personal phrases, no matter what turns into of the accusations towards him.

He stated he believes the federal investigation is over and he cooperated with their evaluation, even voluntarily assembly with federal authorities to reply questions. “I wasn’t going to let a bunch of drugheads run me out of office,” he stated.

The sheriff stated he had been burned by extending compassion to individuals behind bars, however had no plans to cease. “You can’t turn your back,” he stated. “One of these days, I might be in the same shape.”

He chuckled. “You never know.”

This article was co-reported by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today.