Iowa teen who killed rapist ordered to pay rapist’s family $150,000 in damages

A teenage trafficking victim was charged and convicted in an Iowa state court on Tuesday of first-degree murder after stabbing an accused rapist to death. She was sentenced to her five years of heavily supervised probation and ordered to pay her $150,000 in damages to the family of the accused rapist.

Pieper Lewis, now 17, was finally sentenced after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter and intentional injury last year in the 2020 murder of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks.

Lewis was 15 at the time and stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in his Des Moines apartment. The Associated Press reported that Lewis ran amok trying to escape an abusive life and was said to have been adopted by her 28-year-old man, Christopher Brown, who lived in the apartment where she slept in the hallway. increase. The man then trafficked her to other men for sex with her.

Lewis claims one of those men was Brooks. In the weeks before the murder, Brooks had raped her multiple times. Lewis says she was forced at knifepoint by Brown to go to his apartment to have sex with Brooks. After being raped again by Brooks, he became enraged and grabbed a knife from his bedside table and stabbed him.

Currently, police and prosecutors have not disputed Lewis’ sexual assault and human trafficking allegations, but prosecutors said Brooks was in fact asleep when he was stabbed, so there was no immediate danger to Lewis. I claimed.

Lewis’ charges could carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. But Polk County District Judge David M. Porter stayed off his prison sentence. But if Lewis violates any part of her probation, she could be sent to prison and serve out her 20-year term.

During the sentencing, Lewis read the full text in court. She expressed much remorse for the alleged rapist. I sympathize, I wish it hadn’t happened…but it’s ridiculous to say there’s only one victim in this story.”

The article follows the video.

However, prosecutors took issue with Lewis classifying himself as a survivor. Instead, they argued, she was not responsible for Brooks’ death because she left her children in Brooks without her father.

Judge Porter also pressured Lewis to understand that her selection as the runway led to the stabbing. Judge Porter told Lewis: This is her second chance you asked for. You don’t even get a third. ”

Judge Porter changed Lewis’ civil penalty to $7.25 an hour of community service. A statutory requirement requires Lewis to complete his 600 hours of community service.

Iowa is not one of dozens of states that have enacted so-called safe harbor laws that allocate a certain level of impunity to victims of human trafficking.