Skwierawski fosters change in Milwaukee’s criminal justice system

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After earning her law degree from Georgetown Law, Audrey Skwierawski was on her way toward practicing personal injury law.

Then she got held-up at gunpoint while working in Washington, D.C.

Skwierawski, an assistant attorney general with a specialty in providing support in cases involving violence against women, had been a victim of several crimes. The holdup was only the latest one. Going through the court system, she says, sowed the seeds for her passion for the criminal justice.

Skwierawski packed up her car, drove back to Milwaukee and applied for a position in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office. She went on to be an assistant district attorney there for 15 years, leading the domestic violence unit.

“I saw areas of the criminal justice system that could be made better by the people inside of it,” Skwierawski said. “Not on a grandiose scale but there are these incremental, small things that everybody can do working in the system to make it better.”

And that’s what Skwierawski did in Milwaukee while she was an assistant district attorney and a coordinator for the city’s Commission on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, said Terry Perry, Skwierawski’s former boss and the former director of the city of Milwaukee’s Office on Violence Prevention.

“She created a seismic shift in how this community addresses domestic violence, sexual assault and violence against women,” Perry said.

Skwierawski was able to bring all the players to the table to facilitate change in large part because everyone – even law-enforcement officers and survivors – trusted her, said Perry.

Those who worked with her felt she was a true partner, said Carmen Pitre, president and chief executive of the Sojourner Family Peace Center, which collaborated with the commission Skwierawski used to work for.

That ability to connect with people was something Jane Foley, a domestic violence victim-witness supervisor at the Milwaukee County DA’s office, often saw when she was working with Skwierawski on cases involving domestic violence and sexual assault.

“She just leans in and has amazing eye contact and facial expressions,” Foley said. “And the range of people she can talk to can go from an 82-year-old woman who was violated or … little kids or teenagers who don’t want to talk.”

Despite those difficult situations, Skwierawski says, the personal rewards of the job keep her going.

For one, she said, it is a privilege to serve the people of Wisconsin. Second, she is able to help people deal with real problems.

“There’s a certain finality to it,” she said. “You get a jury verdict and you feel like you have done something.”