An Iowa judge sentenced 17-year-old Pieper Lewis to five years probation Tuesday and ordered her to pay $150,000 after she killed a man who allegedly sex trafficked her.
Lewis pleaded guilty last year for fatally stabbing one of her alleged abusers, 37-year-old Zachary Brooks, 30 times in June 2020, AP News reported. Polk County District Judge David M. Porter deferred both of her 10-year prison sentences. Instead, she will reside at the Fresh Start Women’s Center and wear a GPS tracking device.
Porter said the “court has no other option” but to order Lewis to pay the restitution to the family of her rapist, the outlet reported. She will participate in 200 hours of community service each year for three years, The New York Times reported.
At the time of the killing, Lewis was a runaway escaping an abusive life from her abusive stepmother, AP reported. A 28-year-old man abducted her while she slept in the hallway of an apartment building in Des Moines and took her to Brooks by knifepoint.
One man, Christopher Brown, portrayed himself as her boyfriend but forced her to have sex with other men, including Brooks, for money, the Times reported.
“I wish the events on June 1, 2020 never occurred but to say there is one victim is absurd,” – Pieper Lewis @WHO13news
— Zach Fisher (@ZachFisherNews) September 13, 2022
The 17-year-old said Brooks raped her on five occasions in the weeks leading up to his death after forcing her to take intoxicants, the Times reported. Brown allegedly forced her to return to Brooks again where she allegedly woke up to him raping her, but fell back asleep. After waking up later in the night, she grabbed a knife from the bedside nightstand and stabbed him in a rage. Prosecutors argued that Brooks was asleep at the time of the killing and not an immediate danger to Lewis. (RELATED: FBI Announces Major Rescue Of Human Trafficking Victim In ‘Operation Cross Country)
Lewis argued in her Tuesday testimony she is also a victim in this case, though she wished the events of that day never took place, the Times reported.
“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. I took a person’s life. 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.”
One of Lewis’ attorneys, Matthew Sheeley, argued Tuesday that she stabbed Brooks due to being a victim of sex trafficking, the Times reported.
“She stabbed this man multiple times, and the reason she did that was because she was put in a human trafficking situation,” Sheeley said.
Her attorneys accused Brown in court of aiding and abetting sex trafficking Tuesday, the Times reported. He has not yet been charged.