When Pieper Lewis was 15, she was sex-trafficked and raped by adult men, one of whom she stabbed to death. She was recently ordered to pay restitution to his family.
A Iowa teenage human-trafficking victim — initially charged with first-degree murder after stabbing her alleged rapist to death — was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay $150,000 restitution to the man's family, according to reports.
Last year, Pieper Lewis, 17, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury in the June 2020 killing of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks of Des Moines, Iowa, according to The Associated Press.
Lewis had run away in 2020 in an attempt to escape an abusive life, according to the outlet. Lewis had bounced from different temporary living locations, but was sleeping in an apartment hallway when a 28-year-old man took her in, according to reports.
According to the AP, after this man took her in to live with him he sex-trafficked her, forcing her into situations where other adult men would rape her.
Lewis stated that one of those men was Brooks.
According to the AP and The New York Times, during Lewis’s sentencing hearing on Tuesday, the teenage girl recounted being forced at knifepoint by the 28-year-old man to go with Brooks to his apartment for sex, and Brooks raped her when she was unconscious on five occasions leading up to his death.
On this last occasion, Lewis — then 15 — said Brooks forced her to drink alcohol and take substances, and when she woke up and realized that he had raped her yet again, she grabbed a knife and attacked him, according to the AP.
According to reports, both charges against Lewis were punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Polk County District Judge David M. Porter during the hearing on Tuesday deferred those prison sentences. This means that if Lewis violates any portion of her probation, she could be sent to prison to serve that 20-year term. If she meets her probation requirements, her guilty plea could be expunged according to the outlets.
According to The New York Times, ahead of announcing the teen’s sentencing, Porter repeatedly asked Lewis to explain what poor choices she made that led up to Brooks' stabbing.
“I took a person’s life,” she said during the hearing.
“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.”
According to the Times, Porter sentenced Lewis to five years of probation without early release, and ordered her to be placed at the Fresh Start Women’s Center in Des Moines, a residential facility, where she will wear a GPS tracking device.
Porter told the trafficking victim that this decision was done out of concern that Lewis would fall “back into the lifestyle that you thus far left,” according to the outlet.
Lewis had been in juvenile detention since the incident, and during sentencing, Porter expressed “concern” that she sometimes did not want to follow rules set for her in juvenile lockup, according to the AP.
"The next five years of your life will be full of rules you disagree with, I'm sure of it …This is the second chance that you've asked for. You don't get a third,” Porter said during the hearing.
Porter ordered that in addition to performing 200 hours of community service each year for three years, the victim has to pay her rapist’s family restitution, according to the AP.
According to the outlet, Porter said that restitution is mandatory under Iowa law and has been upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court.
Lewis’s sexual assault and trafficking claims have not been challenged by police or prosecutors, but prosecutors have argued that Brooks was asleep at the time he was stabbed and not an immediate danger to Lewis, according to the AP.
According to the outlet, prosecutors also took issue with Lewis calling herself a victim in the case, saying she failed to take responsibility for stabbing Brooks and "leaving his kids without a father."
“She stabbed this man multiple times, and the reason she did that was because she was put in a human trafficking situation,” said Matthew S. Sheeley, an assistant state public defender and one of Lewis's lawyers, at her sentencing hearing.
Iowa is not one of the several states that have a so-called “safe harbor” law that gives trafficking victims some level of criminal immunity.
Karl Schilling with the Iowa Organization for Victim Assistance told the AP that a bill to create a safe harbor law for trafficking victims passed the Iowa House earlier this year, but did not make it past the Senate due to concerns from law enforcement groups that it was too broad.
"There was a working group established to iron out the issues," Shilling said to the outlet. "Hopefully it will be taken up again next year."
According to the AP, Iowa does have an affirmative defense law that gives some leeway to victims of crime if the victim committed the violation "under compulsion by another's threat of serious injury, provided that the defendant reasonably believed that such injury was imminent,” but prosecutors argued that Lewis waived that affirmative defense when she pleaded guilty to manslaughter and willful injury.
According to The New York Times, Lewis said she wished “the events on June 1, 2020, never occurred but to say there is one victim is absurd.” She compared herself to a “Phoenix.”
“This means I face rape, abuse, hatred, betrayal, manipulation, abandonment, loss of a parent, loneliness,” she said. “I wonder what else I will carry in that sack of beautiful pain.”
To assist in Lewis's restitution fees, a GoFundMe was created by a former teacher of the teen, Leland Schipper, with the intial goal of raising $200,000.
"Today, my former student, Pieper Lewis bravely took the microphone during her sentencing hearing and told the courtroom that her voice mattered. I was incredibly proud of her. She was powerful, and she brought me to tears," Schipper wrote on the fundraiser page.
According to the GoFundMe, Schipper said the money would be used first to pay off the $150,000 restitution and an additional $4,000 owed to the state.
Donation exceeded the amount, and according to the fundraiser page, the remainder is intended to “remove financial barriers for Pieper in pursuing college/university or starting her own business [and] give Pieper the financial capacity to explore ways to help other young victims of sex crimes," Schipper said.
“I am overjoyed with the prospect of removing this burden from Pieper ... A child who was raped, under no circumstances, should owe the rapist’s family money," she wrote on the fundraiser's page.
