Current Events > Girl who killed accused rapist must pay his family $150,000.

(+) Yeah! (+)

A teenage human trafficking victim who was initially charged with first-degree murder after she stabbed her accused rapist to death was sentenced on Tuesday in an Iowa court to five years of closely supervised probation and ordered to pay $150,000 restitution to the mans family.

Pieper Lewis, 17, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and wilful injury in the June 2020 killing of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks of Des Moines. Both charges were punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Polk County District judge David M Porter on Tuesday deferred those prison sentences, meaning that if Lewis violates any portion of her probation, she could be sent to prison to serve that 20-year term.

As for being required to pay the estate of her rapist, this court is presented with no other option, Porter said, noting the restitution is mandatory under Iowa law that has been upheld by the Iowa supreme court.

Lewis was 15 when she stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment. Officials have said Lewis was a runaway who was seeking to escape an abusive life with her adopted mother and was sleeping in the hallways of a Des Moines apartment building when a 28-year-old man took her in before forcibly trafficking her to other men for sex.

Lewis said one of those men was Brooks and that he had raped her multiple times in the weeks before his death. She recounted being forced at knifepoint by the 28-year-old man to go with Brooks to his apartment for sex. She told officials that after Brooks had raped her yet again, she grabbed a knife from a bedside table and stabbed Brooks in a fit of rage.

Police and prosecutors have not disputed that Lewis was sexually assaulted and trafficked. But prosecutors have argued that Brooks was asleep at the time he was stabbed and not an immediate danger to Lewis.

Iowa is not among the dozens of states that have a so-called safe harbor law that gives trafficking victims at least some level of criminal immunity.
Lewis, who earned her GED while being held in juvenile detention, acknowledged in a statement prior to her sentencing that she struggled with the structure of her detention, including why I was treated like fragile glass or wasnt allowed to communicate with her friends or family.

My spirit has been burned, but still glows through the flames, she read from a statement she had prepared. Hear me roar, see me glow, and watch me grow.

I am a survivor, she added.

Prosecutors took issue with Lewis calling herself a victim in the case and said she failed to take responsibility for stabbing Brooks and leaving his kids without a father.

The judge peppered Lewis with repeated requests to explain what poor choices she made that led up to Brooks stabbing and expressed concern that she sometimes did not want to follow rules set for her in juvenile lockup.

The next five years of your life will be full of rules you disagree with, Im sure of it, Porter said. He later added, This is the second chance that youve asked for. You dont get a third.

Karl Schilling with the Iowa Organization for Victim Assistance said a bill to create a safe harbor law for trafficking victims passed the Iowa House earlier this year, but stalled in the Senate under concerns from law enforcement groups that it was too broad.

There was a working group established to iron out the issues, Shilling said. Hopefully it will be taken up again next year.

Iowa does have an affirmative defense law that gives some leeway to victims of crime if the victim committed the violation under compulsion by anothers threat of serious injury, provided that the defendant reasonably believed that such injury was imminent.

Prosecutors argued Tuesday that Lewis waived that affirmative defense when she pleaded guilty to manslaughter and willful injury.

So was there evidence that countered her narrative that she was kidnapped and raped,

Police and prosecutors have not disputed that Lewis was sexually assaulted and trafficked

Holy shit

What an absolute joke of a justice system.

She only plead guilty because taking a manslaughter charge is a lot less risky than trying to win a case when charged with first degree murder. The fact she was charged as an adult shows that they really, really wanted her to go to prison no matter what.

What should have happened was she was a minor so they'd force her into therapy but otherwise would never have any charges show up in any background checks for her ever again.

All this does is ensure that her entire life has been taken from her when it's obvious she would never have had a reason to commit any other crimes if she actually got the help she needed. Instead she's just had a ton of jobs forever removed from her future, and a massive debt that'll take decades to pay off in the best case scenario.

This isn't some "second chance" so much as setting her up for failure so that she will be thrown in prison and never know a day of freedom in her adult life.

Even under normal circumstances it seems unusual to assign that much restitution to a minor

Even under normal circumstances it seems unusual to assign that much restitution to a minor

I clicked the topic assuming this was some sort of vengeance thing and she had killed the rapist later. Which while understandable is still very illegal.

But no, this woman was still in fucking captivity when she killed her rapist. Like in what fucking world does a trafficked person killing her way out of a situation count as murder? That's just self-defense. Reading about the further court proceedings just made me angrier. I hope both the judge and prosecutor lose their jobs.

The only thing that makes sense is the prosecution must have crafted the story that she wasn't kidnapped or raped. That she was just his girlfriend

Holy shit

What an absolute joke of a justice system.

Why...the fuck. It's shit like this and constantly letting go of repeat criminals that makes me lose faith in the justice system.

The only thing that makes sense is the prosecution must have crafted the story that she wasn't kidnapped or raped. That she was just his girlfriend

The justice system in the more developed countries kinda just sucks. You've gotta be veeery meticulous and know the law's loopholes to not get charged with anything, because the other party can do the same right back to you :/ The countries try to be so equal with their laws, that they end up being so grey that the law hardly differentiates between either side, essentially making it come down to which side knows the law well enough to take advantage of and lie about it.
Some really messed up situations from the USA, Japan, etc.'s court case results that are just baffling and are prime examples of why some of these loopholes and conditions just shouldn't exist...

I clicked the topic assuming this was some sort of vengeance thing and she had killed the rapist later. Which while understandable is still very illegal.

But no, this woman was still in fucking captivity when she killed her rapist. Like in what fucking world does a trafficked person killing her way out of a situation count as murder? That's just self-defense.

His 15 year old girl friend....

No the only thing that makes sense is what is said in the article...

It's literally a bullshit law because the rapist was sleeping while she killed him making him "not a threat"