#Socialites, get into this: A teenage sex trafficking victim who killed her rapist was sentenced to five years of closely supervised probation and has been ordered to pay $150,000 restitution to her abuser’s family. The judge handed down the sentence on Tuesday for the Iowa teen.
Pieper Lewis, who was 15 when she stabbed 37-year-old Zachary Brooks, in a Des Moines apartment, had run away from home to escape her abusive adoptive mother. Officials said she was sleeping in the halls of an apartment building when Christopher Brown, 28, took her in and began trafficking her to other men for sex. One of those men was Brooks, who Lewis said raped her multiple times.
She detailed being forced at knife point to go to his apartment as Brooks raped her. However, it would be his last time as Lewis grabbed a knife off a bedside table and stabbed him 30 times. The incident went down in June 2020 and just last year, Lewis pleaded to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury, both of which were punishable by up to 10 years in prison. She was initially charged with first-degree murder. However, Polk County District Judge David Porter deferred those prison sentences on Tuesday, meaning Lewis could still serve 20 years if she violates her probation. What’s even more eye-raising is that police nor prosecutors disputed whether Lewis was trafficked and assaulted, but prosecutors allege that Brooks was not an immediate threat at the time because he was asleep when he was stabbed…. Fox News notes.
So Why Does The Victim Have To Pay?
Judge David Porter explained that the restitution is mandatory under Iowa law. Porter added that he ordered Lewis to pay restitution to Brooks’ family because the court was “presented with no other option.”
The judge ordered her to be placed in a residential facility, where she must wear a tracking monitor.
“The next five years of your life will be full of rules you disagree with, I’m sure of it,” Mr Porter said. “This is the second chance that you’ve asked for. You don’t get a third.”
As shocking as that may sound to some people, Lewis accepted she had committed a crime but also defended her actions.
“I took a person’s life,” she said. “My intentions that day were not to just to go out and take somebody’s life. In my mind I felt that I wasn’t safe and I felt that I was in danger, which resulted in the acts. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that a crime was committed.”
“My spirit has been burned, but still glows through the flames. Hear me roar, see me glow, and watch me grow,” Lewis read on Tuesday from a statement she had prepared, the Associated Press news agency quoted.
“I am a survivor,” she added.