The text messages were brief, but state Rep. Cecelie Williams told the Missouri House on Thursday that they carried her backward in time.
She thought she had worked through the feelings of fear, self-doubt and the instinct to shrink and stay quiet. Last year, she publicly shared her history of domestic abuse for the first time, hoping it would give purpose to her pain.
But those feelings came rushing back, she said, when she looked at her phone during a September special legislative session and found messages from Democratic state Rep. Jeremy Dean.
“I live with PTSD from abuse I endured,” Williams said. “And this situation has intensified those triggers for me for more than four months.”
Williams’ speech preceded a 138-10 House vote to sanction Dean for sending her obscene and unwanted text messages, a decision that followed a bipartisan ethics investigation but stopped short of expulsion.
All 10 “no” votes came from Democratic lawmakers.
Williams voted in support of the punishment — which includes removal from committees, mandatory sexual harassment training and a requirement that Dean remain at least 50 feet away from her — but made clear she believed expulsion was warranted.
“We are held to a higher standard, one that should exceed any corporate or private workplace,” Williams said. “Because, let us be honest, at any other job, a message like that would be grounds for immediate termination, no questions asked. We cannot excuse behavior in the Capitol that would never be tolerated anywhere else.”
As Williams spoke, Dean sat silently at his desk. He voted “present” on the ethics report and left the chamber shortly after the vote. Dean has publicly apologized for the messages but told The Independent earlier this month that the ethics complaint was politically motivated.
On Sept. 4, while engaged in a sit-in protest on the House floor, Dean sent a text message to Williams, a Republican from Dittmer, while she was participating in a House Elections Committee hearing.
At the time, the committee was taking testimony on a proposal to change how majorities are counted for constitutional amendments proposed by initiative petition.
The message included a graphic reference to an oral sex act involving the president and questioned how Republicans could speak while engaged in it. According to the ethics report, Dean was watching a livestream of the hearing and sent a second message after seeing Williams’ reaction.
Williams said a second message arrived roughly 20 minutes after the first, following a colleague’s photo of her phone displaying the original text. That message, she said, read: “Make sure it isn’t blurry.”
Dean told investigators that he recognized the messages were “inappropriate and unprofessional” and said he regretted sending them. He denied any intent to disrupt the legislative process, intimidate Williams or improperly influence her participation in the hearing.
The House Ethics Committee — the only House committee with equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats and a minority-party vice chair — unanimously approved the sanctions.
After the messages became public, Williams said the scrutiny shifted quickly toward her rather than the sender. She was asked what she sent first, whether she provoked the exchange and why she told anyone at all.
“I have heard those questions before,” she told the chamber. “Just in another chapter of my life.”
Earlier in the year, during a freshman orientation, Williams said she spoke openly in a small group about surviving abuse and how it shaped her life. Dean was present, she said, and already knew her story — a fact that made the messages feel more calculated.
Williams rejected the notion that Dean apologized to her, describing an unsigned email she said amounted to little more than: “I’m sorry you were offended.”
“That is not an apology,” she said. “It is deflection.”
The most painful moment, she said, came when her 13-year-old daughter learned about the messages after seeing a newspaper while checking the mail.
“She cried,” Williams said. “Only knowing that something had hurt her mom.”
Williams said she felt embarrassed and ashamed, despite knowing she had done nothing wrong — a reaction she recognized as a coping mechanism shaped by earlier trauma. She began moving through the Capitol differently, she said, more guarded and more cautious.
“I wish this had never happened,” Williams told the House. “But I cannot undo the text that was sent.”
What she could do, she said, was refuse to remain silent.
“Silence may have been my survival once,” Williams said. “But today, my voice is my defense.”
This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.
