Therapist sexual assault; victim speaks

MILWAUKEE - She went in for mental health treatment and came out a victim of sexual assault. Now, a Milwaukee woman is sharing her story of trust and betrayal.

Tonya Spencer is far from the first person to accuse George Ramsey of a sex crime, but she is the first one whose complaint led to a criminal conviction. 

"Thumbs up for me," Spencer said as she sat down with FOX6 Investigator Bryan Polcyn just six days after a jury convicted Ramsey of Sexual Exploitation by a Therapist. "Tell your truth."

Spencer testified on April 9th in the long-awaited trial which had previously been postponed six times in the past three years. She recounted what happened just moments after Ramsey locked the door of his clinic at 3500 N. Sherman Boulevard in Milwaukee in March 2021.

"Before I know it, he’s pulling his pants… his boxers are down, and he’s telling me what to do," Spencer said. "He just took advantage of a situation."

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Ramsey was a licensed professional counselor. Spencer was one of his clients.

"He told me he wanted oral sex," Spencer testified. 

"Did he ask for it nicely?" asked Assistant District Attorney Sara Sadowski.

"No," Spencer replied, "He just said, ‘Do it.’"

At the time, Ramsey worked at multiple locations, including Achievement Associates at 5228 W. Fond du Lac. Spencer first saw him at a clinic in Brown Deer. The assault occurred at New Beginnings Wellness near Sherman and Capital. 

Spencer says she was reluctant to see Ramsey after he'd grabbed her "butt" during the first session. When she arrived for her second appointment, she told jurors the 6'4" therapist locked the door and powered off Spencer's phone.

"I knew I was in trouble," she said. "I can’t bite him. I can't do anything. Because he has the key."

It's a betrayal she is still trying to process three years later.

"I trusted him," she said. 

Spencer went to police two days later. Turns out, she was not the first client to accuse Ramsey of sexual groping or assault. Two other women had come forward three years earlier. Their complaints did not lead to charges. But when Spencer came forward, prosecutors charged Ramsey with sexually exploiting all three women.

On April 8, 2024 – more than three years later – the case finally went to trial.

"It was embarrassing," Spencer said of getting up on the witness stand in front of strangers and recounting such a personal violation.

Of the three victims named in the complaint, one failed to show up for court - a woman identified only by her initials, NZG. 

Another woman, identified as SLW, was first to take the stand. She recalled how Ramsey had urged her to wear more revealing clothing to future appointments.

"Oh yeah, he said, wear something sexy," SLW testified.

Spencer received similar instructions.

"He said he wants revealing things to show my body," she said.

Both testified that Ramsey told them what to wear at one appointment, then sexually assaulted them at the next. 

"Think about how similar their statements were," Sadowski implored jurors.

The victims say they never met. And their allegations came three years apart.

But there were differences, too. SLW had little evidence beyond her own memories, which have become cloudier over the six years since she reported the assault to police. Spencer, on the other hand, had more than just memories. She had text messages.

One of those messages sent by Ramsey to Spencer said, "Dress for Success." He says it was encouragement to wear colorful clothes to brighten her mood. Spencer said Ramsey was more specific during the first session, saying it meant to wear clothing that showed off her body.

But there was one other thing Spencer remembered that played a key role in the case.

"His very distinctive genitalia," Sadowski summed it up during closing argument.

"I mainly remembered his private parts," Spencer said, "because I said if this goes anywhere, I’m going to need to identify this."

Spencer gave police a graphic description of Ramsey's male sex organ, including one thing that took her by surprise.

"It was really small," she said.

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To prove whether her description was accurate, police secured a search warrant for photographs of Ramsey's genitalia. A judge granted the warrant and police took the pictures while Ramsey was in custody. His attorney tried to have the photographs thrown out, but the court allowed them to be introduced as evidence. 

That likely played a role in Ramsey's decision to testify on his own behalf.

"Did you have any physical contact with her?" asked Ramsey's attorney, Matt Last.

"None," he replied.

Next, the 64-year-old former professional counselor offered jurors an alternate explanation for how Spencer was able to accurately describe his private parts. He said she barged in on him when he was in the clinic's bathroom.

"As I'm dropping my pants to use the restroom," Ramsey testified, "she knocks on the door wanting to know how long she’s going to be there. And the door flies wide open. And now I’ve got my pants down."

"Absolutely not," Spencer said. "He never went to the bathroom. We never left his office."

When the prosecutor addressed Ramsey's version of events during closing arguments, she had two works for the jury: "Come on." 

Still, there was one big piece of the puzzle Sadowski had to leave out – the results of a FOX6 investigation.

Before Ramsey even applied to become a licensed Wisconsin therapist, he already had at least for felony convictions.

But that's not all.

Between 1997 and 2002, four different women accused Ramsey of rape. Two of them at knife point.

"How did you get a therapy license with a record like that?" asked FOX6 Investigator Bryan Polcyn as Ramsey exited a courtroom in 2022.

Spencer had never heard any of that before.

"Oh my God!" she said. 

Ramsey was never charged with any of those four sexual assaults, because all four alleged victims failed to cooperate with investigators.

"And that is why he was able to do what he did to me," she said.

Spencer says she believes Ramsey preyed upon drug addicts and mental health patients for a reason.

"These are people that society doesn't really look too favorably upon," she said. "I think that’s why he did that, because if we come forward, who’s really going to believe us over him?"

And that's exactly what Ramsey's lawyer tried to emphasize at trial.

"This case boils down to the credibility of (SLW) and the credibility of Ms. Spencer," he said.

But it almost never got this far.

"I wanted to back out of this thing a few times," Spencer said.

The trial was postponed six times in three years – four times at Ramsey's request. And Spencer says at one point she told prosecutors she wanted out.

"You think that’s what George Ramsey wanted," Polcyn asked.
"I think that’s what he banked on," Spencer said. "I think he banked on that."

Prosecutors told her she could get in trouble if she backed out now. So Spencer persisted. Now, she says, she's glad she did.

"He needs to pay for what he did," she said.

On April 10, jurors issued a split verdict, acquitting Ramsey on one count, but convicting him of the assault on Tonya Spencer. She will forever wonder why the professional she trusted saw her as an easy target.

"You violated me," she said. "You did the unthinkable to me. And I want to know why."

But she said, knowing where he's headed now, might just be the best therapy of all.

"We all won. Every female that he assaulted. We won."

After the verdict, the court ordered Ramsey to be immediately taken into custody. He's currently in the Milwaukee County Jail awaiting sentencing, which is scheduled for June 12th. 

For a deeper dive into the George Ramsey investigation and trial, and to hear what else Spencer said during her recent conversation with FOX6 Investigators, download "Broken Trust." It's the latest episode of the FOX6 podcast, Open Record. It's available now wherever you download your podcasts. It's also streaming exclusively on FOX Local.

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