Judge orders teenage trafficking victim to pay $150K in restitution to family of r@pist she st@bbed more than 30 times to d€ath
Judge orders teenage trafficking victim to pay $150K in restitution to family of r@pist she st@bbed more than 30 times to d€ath
A teenage sex trafficking victim from Iowa, US who stabbed her r@pist to d€ath was sentenced by a judge on Tuesday to five years of closely supervised probation and must pay $150,000 restitution to her abuser’s family.
Pieper Lewis, 17, stabbed her abuser, 37-year-old Zachary Brooks, more than 30 times in June 2020. She was initially charged with first-degree murder but last year, Lewis pleaded to involuntary m@nslaughter and willful injury, both of which were punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
But the Polk County District Judge David Porter deferred those prison sentences on Tuesday, September 13,meaning Lewis could serve 20 years if she violates her probation.
Porter said he ordered Lewis to pay restitution to Brooks’ family because the court was “presented with no other option.” He explained that the restitution is mandatory under Iowa law.
Lewis, was 15 when she stabbed Brooks in a Des Moines apartment.
She ran away from home to escape her abusive adoptive mother. 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 s€x, according to prosecutors..
Among those men she was being trafficked to was Brooks, who Lewis said raped her multiple times before she k!lled him. She recalled being forced at knife point to go to his apartment for s€x. After Brooks r@ped her for what would end up being the last time, Lewis grabbed a knife off a bedside table and st@bbed him.
Neither police nor prosecutors dispute Lewis side of the story that she was trafficked and assaulted, but prosecutors allege that Brooks was not an immediate threat because he was asleep when he was st@bbed.
Iowa doesn’t have a safe harbor law that gives trafficking victims in other states some level of criminal immunity.
