MEET DJUNA
Djuna Perkins is an attorney with over 30 years of experience as a prosecutor, litigator, and external consultant to educational institutions and employers. She served for ten years as a Massachusetts assistant attorney general (AAG) and assistant district attorney (ADA). As an AAG, she worked in the Narcotics Unit, the Safe Neighborhood Initiative, and in Appeals. As an ADA in Suffolk County, Djuna was Chief of the Domestic Violence Unit, where she prosecuted the most egregious crimes of domestic violence, established domestic violence prosecution protocols, and oversaw all domestic violence prosecutions in Suffolk County.
Djuna entered the private practice of law in 2003, where she specialized in representing survivors of sexual abuse and harassment in litigation against offenders and responsible third parties, as well as the family of Julissa Brisman, who was allegedly murdered by “Craigslist Killer” Phillip Markov. An amicus brief she wrote to the state’s highest court helped preserve a rule of evidence critical in sexual assault prosecutions.
For Djuna, injustice is personal.
When she was a newborn baby, Djuna's mother, struggling with severe postpartum depression, died by suicide. Four months later, her father was stabbed and nearly lost his life. Despite these tragedies and a childhood marked by family instability, abuse, neglect, and poverty, Djuna never lost hope. She saw close relatives become both victims and perpetrators of serious crimes, yet remained determined to forge a different path. After graduating from high school in three years, Djuna attended Smith College with the help of financial aid, a Pell Grant, Social Security Survivors’ benefits, and student loans. There, an internship at the United States Supreme Court inspired her to realize that, through law, she could become the voice for others she once lacked herself. After Smith, Djuna attended Boston University School of Law, working as a student public defender. After graduating, she decided to dedicate her career to standing up, fighting back, and protecting those most at risk.
Djuna with her siblings, step-siblings, and father, age 7.
Djuna took the Massachusetts and New York State Bar Exam at the same time, passing both.
Djuna opened her own law office in 2012 to specialize in institutional responses to allegations of sexual misconduct and discrimination. Djuna has served in over 150 internal discipline matters for major educational institutions, police departments, and employers throughout New England as a hearing officer, investigator or advocate. Djuna’s investigation of Howie Leung, the teacher prosecuted for sexual abuse of a student at a Massachusetts school, resulted in the termination and license suspension of the superintendent and high school principal where Leung taught full-time, and the District adopted the significant institutional reforms she recommended. Djuna also conducts effective, interactive trainings for teachers and students to prevent school-based sexual misconduct.
While maintaining her work with institutions, Djuna continued to represent survivors of sexual abuse and discrimination in third-party litigation in her solo practice, including a patient sexually molested by her fertility doctor, Roger Ian Hardy, in a case that exposed a ten-year pattern of sexual abuse of patients.
In addition to her decades of criminal and civil jury trial experience in the District and Superior Courts of Massachusetts, Djuna has appeared before the Massachusetts Appeals Court, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Her work with educational institutions has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and in The Chronicle of Higher Education. She has served as an expert witness in sexual misconduct investigations, taught as an adjunct professor at Northeastern University, and has published articles in the Massachusetts Law Review, the Boston Bar Journal, and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. She has been named a Massachusetts Super Lawyer since 2018.
Outside her law practice, Djuna has coached youth rowing, enjoys rowing on the Charles, and restores vintage furniture. She lives in Dedham with her husband, a Milton Public Schools teacher. They have three adult children.