An Iowa court on Tuesday convicted a teenage human trafficking victim of first-degree murder after stabbing her alleged rapist to death and sentenced her to five years of probation and $150,000 in restitution.
Pieper Lewis, 17, was found guilty Tuesday after pleading guilty in the June 2020 killing of 37-year-old Des Moines resident Zachary Brooks. Both charges are punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Polk County District Judge David M. Porter on Tuesday reserved the sentences, which means Lewis could be sent to prison to serve 20 years if he violates any part of her probation.
As for the obligation to pay her rapist’s estate, “this court has no choice,” Porter said, noting that compensation is mandatory under Iowa law, which the Iowa Supreme Court upheld.
Lewis stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in his Des Moines apartment when he was 15. Lewis, a fugitive who escaped an abusive life with his adoptive mother, slept in the hallway of a Des Moines apartment building when a 28-year-old man took her in and forcibly sold her to other men, officials said. sexuality.
Lewis said one of the men was Brooks, who raped her multiple times in the weeks before her death. She told how she was forced to have sex with Brooks at his apartment by the 28-year-old man with a knife. She told police that after Brooks raped her again, she took a knife from the bedside table and stabbed Brooks to death in a fit of rage.
Police and prosecutors have not denied that Lewis was sexually assaulted and trafficked. But prosecutors argued that Brooks was asleep when he was stabbed and there was no immediate danger to Lewis.
Iowa is not one of dozens of states with so-called safe harbor laws, which grant victims of human trafficking at least some degree of criminal immunity.
Lewis, who received a GED while in juvenile detention, admitted in a statement before sentencing that she struggled with the detention structure, including “why I was treated as breakable glass” or not allowed to communicate with friends or family.
“My spirit was burned, but it still glowed from the flames,” she read in a statement she prepared. “Listen to my roar, watch me shine, watch me grow.”
“I’m a survivor,” she added.
The AP doesn’t usually name sexual assault victims, but Lewis acknowledged that her name has been used in stories about her case before.
Prosecutors noted that Lewis claimed to be a victim of the case and said she did not take responsibility for stabbing Brooks and “leaving his child without a father.”
The judge has repeatedly asked Lewis to explain what wrong decisions she made that resulted in Brooks being stabbed, and expressed concern that she sometimes did not want to abide by the juvenile detention rules laid out for her.
“I’m sure the next five years of your life will be filled with rules you don’t agree with,” Porter said. He later added: “This is the second chance you asked for. You’re not going to get a third.”
Karl Schilling of Iowa Victim Aid said earlier this year the Iowa House passed a bill to create a safe harbor law for victims of human trafficking, but it has been slammed by law enforcement groups in the Senate. There are fears that the bill is too broad and stalled.
