Prosecutor hit with professional conduct complaint

COLUMBUS — The Ohio Supreme Court’s disciplinary counsel filed a complaint Wednesday against Hocking County Prosecutor Ryan Black, who is set to resign from his position effective April 19.

The complaint shed further light on Black’s alleged inappropriate relationships and workplace conduct over the course of his tenure, made public in a lawsuit filed in February by two former employees.

The plaintiffs in that case, Kate Ricketts and Kelsey Vanscyoc, both former victim advocates in the office, match the initials of K.R. and K.V. listed in Wednesday’s complaint.

Outside the scope of February’s lawsuit, the complaint alleges other misdeeds by Black, including an inappropriate relationship with suspended Hocking County Commissioner Jessica Dicken.

As a background, the complaint lays out a workplace environment where Black’s behavior was allegedly crass and erratic; his frequent “screaming outbursts” combined with employees’ awareness of the gun in his office, the complaint says, “made staff members afraid of (Black’s) volatility.”

Assistant prosecutor Alisa Turner was mentioned for her tendency to consciously avoid the prosecutor, using “bookshelves to build a wall around her shared office space so she could distance herself” from him.

Stephanie Russell-Ramos, a former assistant prosecutor in Hocking County for roughly 11 months in 2021, was allegedly subject to numerous improper remarks. This included Black doing impressions of performing oral sex on her, in the presence of both her and the prosecutor’s office manager.

Several instances are listed where Russell-Ramos allegedly received shirtless photos of Black, which she found necessary to compliment “to maintain a good working relationship.”

Black, in the presence of Russell-Ramos and now-Commissioner Jason D’Onofrio, apparently said that the woman’s number was written on the bathroom stall of the sheriff’s department. After Russell-Ramos was “embarrassed” and said it was not true, Black continually insisted it was.

The following month, Russell-Ramos resigned from the office.

Over the course of 2021, K.V., as she is listed in the complaint, was in the process of divorcing her husband, and was the victim of a sexual assault by an unidentified individual. Black drove her to the hospital for examination after the assault.

When K.V. revealed she was pregnant at the beginning of 2022, the complaint claims, Black made several quips about inducing miscarriage, and when she miscarried, he congratulated her.

“Knowing that K.V. was in a vulnerable state due to the pending divorce, sexual assault, and miscarriage, (Black) began grooming K.V. to engage in a sexual relationship with him by sending her increasingly sexual text messages,” the complaint alleges.

It also notes that Black was K.V.’s supervisor, and had authority to fire and hire her, as well as other victim advocates.

“If you look dashing and I grope you, don’t sue me lmao,” he said in a text conversation with K.V. in May 2022.

Into August, the two began sharing explicit text messages. Black proposed that the two have sex and was turned down, but two days later, she agreed. They engaged in sex once more at Black’s request. Over the next month or so, he continually pressed her, but after her declining or delaying, he stopped.

Into January of 2023, an investigation into then-Sheriff’s Deputy Caleb Moritz began. Olen Martin, the investigator for the case, and assistant prosecutor Cynthia Ellison, asked that Black recuse himself due to Moritz and Black’s “friendly relationship.” This allegedly included attending parties at Moritz’s house, where some of the alleged inappropriate behavior toward Russell-Ramos occurred.

After K.V. asked Ellison about how the meeting went and told Black it went well, the prosecutor allegedly kicked out his chair from behind him and stood up over K.V., who was still sitting. He began screaming at her, which was corroborated by several attorneys and court staff.

K.V. left a letter the next day on Black’s desk, referring to his conduct as disrespectful, and Black largely disappeared from the office for the next month and a half, the complaint says. Upon his return, he told K.V. he was requiring her to take a two-week leave because she was supposedly “unstable.” He also forbade her from speaking to anyone in the office during this time.

In the interim, the office effectively replaced K.V.’s work with a new victim advocate. K.V. resigned around the turn of April 2023. Although she “was not officially terminated, she felt her work environment had become so hostile that she had no other choice but to leave her position.”

Later that year, on Aug. 2, the complaint alleges, Black had an affair with Commissioner Dicken, a violation of lawyer-client conduct, since the relationship did not exist prior to Dicken’s role as commissioner.

Black’s then-fiancé, the complaint alleges, unexpectedly walked into their shared bedroom and found that Dicken and Black engaged in a sex act.

Additionally, the complaint alleges that Black inappropriately used his public office in a tirade against county IT Director Mark Stout. After a prosecutor’s office staff member called Stout about an issue with several computers that had been moved, Stout replied he was busy and would try to fix the issue in the afternoon or following day.

Black then called Moritz, who at the time, in June 2022, was still a sheriff’s deputy. He began “screaming that he wanted Stout arrested for obstructing official business because Stout would not abandon his project to fix the (prosecutor’s office) computers.”

The totality of counts listed amount to, in the language of the complaint, “conduct that adversely reflects on the lawyer’s fitness to practice law.”

Disciplinary counsel Joseph M. Caligiuri, and assistant disciplinary counsels Ryan Sander and Karen Osmond filed the complaint, asking Black that Black be “sanctioned accordingly.”

Contacted via email by the Logan Daily News, the prosecutor did not respond to request for comment by press time.