Cynthia West was at the center of public scrutiny after Colleen Hinely, wife of West’s opponent for the Okaloosa School Board District 5 seat, Brett Hinely, accidentally revealed she was behind anonymous Facebook posts questioning West’s qualifications.
Colleen Hinely made an anonymous post to the Facebook group Crestview Area Community News accusing West of deleting comments asking her to disclose that she’s not a licensed mental health professional.
A group member quickly called out Colleen Hinely as she had uploaded a screenshot in her anonymous post but forgot to crop out her own profile picture from the bottom corner.
Colleen Hinely responded in another Facebook post, admitting she made the posts and endorsing her husband. She has since deleted all her posts on the matter, including the original anonymous ones. Neither she nor Brett Hinely responded to requests for comment.
West’s response
West spoke to Mid Bay News today and said she’s never tried to hide her mental health background.
“I graduated with my bachelor’s in psychology, I believe, in 2011, from Weber State University, and then I went on and I got my master’s from Arizona State University in 2015.”
West said she obtained a License Master Social Worker (LMSW) license in Arizona after she graduated, but it has since expired.
“I was working for the Vet Center, which is basically the VA, doing trauma counseling, military combat trauma and military sexual trauma counseling,” she said. “And then we were military, and so we PCSed, and I had my daughter, and so I wasn’t using my license … so I let my license lapse, thinking, you know, ‘if I ever go back, I’ll just test again and license in the state where we end up.’”
West said when she moved to Florida, she started working as a substance abuse counselor at the Lakeview Center’s methadone clinic in Shalimar.
“Fun fact, in Florida, you don’t have to be licensed to be a substance abuse counselor,” she said. “It’s different, if you look at the statutes for substance abuse versus general mental health. And so, everything that I have stated, I am very cautious. I say ‘mental health professional,’ and right now I’m doing case management for a legal consultation company, so I don’t say, I have never said I am a licensed social worker.”
This is not the first time West has been a topic of public debate on social media. She addressed suggestive photos circulating online she’d posted in 2022.
“It’s from the past,” West said. “It’s from a deleted account that got unearthed, right? I mean, this is a point of my life where— since then I found faith, and my life has been transformed. And so that is that. I mean, that’s the reality.”
West’s since-deleted posts were from an old Twitter account. The posts included innuendos and suggestive selfies. West said the circulation of these posts supports her campaign’s efforts against cyberbullying.
“We live in such a digital world but that’s one of the tactics that we’re seeing with our kids, where there might be something that somebody will grab [post], and then they’re just relentless,” West said. “Like you have no value as a human because of it, and then they’ll just smear it everywhere. … I feel like I have to use this to kind of amplify that this is what our kids are experiencing. This is us as adults, right? And this is the same stuff that’s happening with kids. They can’t escape it when they go home.”
West will be on the ballot against Brett Hinely for the school board’s District 5 seat. Voting for the Florida Primary is August 18, and polling locations are listed on the Supervisor of Elections website.
