A teenage human trafficking victim in Iowa has been sentenced to five years of supervised probation and must pay thousands of dollars after being charged in the fatal stabbing of her accused rapist in 2020.
Pieper Lewis, 17, was sentenced on Tuesday, one year after she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury in the death of Zachary Brooks more than two years ago. She will also be required to pay $150,000 in restitution to Brooks’s family after prosecutors argued she left his children fatherless.
POLICE IN FLORIDA ARREST 160 IN SEVEN-DAY HUMAN TRAFFICKING STING OPERATION
Lewis was just 15 years old when she stabbed Brooks to death in a Des Moines apartment in June 2020, according to officials. At the time, the teenager had run away from home to escape her abusive adopted mother and was sleeping in the hallways of an apartment building when a 28-year-old man took her in, according to officials. She was then forced into human trafficking and sold to other men for sex, they said.
Brooks, one of the men she was sold to, raped her several times before his death, Lewis testified in court. At one point, Lewis was forced at knifepoint to go with Brooks to his apartment, she recalled.
After one incident in which she was raped, Lewis said she stabbed Brooks in a fit of rage while he was asleep, killing him. However, prosecutors argued that because Brooks was not awake at the time of the stabbing, he was not an immediate danger to Lewis.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Throughout the trial, the judge pressed Lewis to detail the poor decisions that led up to Brooks’s death, expressing concerns about her behavior in juvenile detention.
“The next five years of your life will be full of rules you disagree with, I’m sure of it,” said Polk County District Judge David M. Porter. “This is the second chance that you’ve asked for. You don’t get a third.”
