Contact: Courtney Beyer, [email protected]
MADISON — In a shocking new report by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Brad Schimel as a local county prosecutor sought no jail time for a man convicted of second-degree sexual assault of a child while blaming the two victims of the assault for the sentencing leniency:
From Patrick Marley, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
“As an assistant district attorney in Waukesha County in 2003, Schimel prosecuted Dustin Yoss for attacking two 15-year-olds. In one incident, Yoss was alleged to have held down a girl and pulled down his pants before she escaped.
“In another, Yoss allegedly badgered a different 15-year-old to have sex with him…she told him to stop but he wouldn’t stop, according to the criminal complaint…
““Both victims consider their decisions they made that night to be very bad judgment to put themselves in the bedroom alone with Mr. Yoss,” Schimel told the judge…
“As to the victim who eventually agreed to have sex, Schimel told the judge, “She said no, no, no, no, but then eventually gave in and then let the defendant do it out of fear. That’s a little tougher call to — or a lot tougher call to make the force allegation, and she knows that.””
“Brad Schimel clearly doesn’t care about crime victims or keeping Wisconsin safe,” said Courtney Beyer, Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesperson.“If he did, he would have treated these two young women with a modicum of respect and made sure justice was delivered. Unfortunately, this is what Wisconsinites have learned to expect from their attorney general who failed to test Wisconsin’s rape kit backlog in a timely manner, denying timely justice to thousands of survivors of sexual assault.”
Two years after he first took office and learned of the Wisconsin’s rapekit backlog, Brad Schimel had tested only 9 of the over 6,000 backlogged kits. He then went on to outright lie about the backlog, claiming there was none. Brad Schimel stood in the way of efforts to expedite testing of the backlog, shutting down legislative efforts to provide the DOJ with more funding while “wait[ing] for a bargain price” to begin testing.
