Judge orders teenage trafficking victim to pay $150K in restitution to family of rapist she stabbed more than 30 times to death

A teenage sex trafficking victim from Iowa, US who stabbed her rapist to death was sentenced by a judge on Tuesday September 14, to five years of closely supervised probation and must pay $150,000 restitution to her abuser’s family.

Pieper Lewis, 17, stabbed her abuser, 37-year-old Zachary Brooks, more than 30 times in June 2020. She was initially charged with first-degree murder but last year, Lewis pleaded to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury, both of which were punishable by up to 10 years in prison. 

But the Polk County District Judge David Porter deferred those prison sentences on Tuesday,  September 13,meaning Lewis could serve 20 years if she violates her probation.

Porter said he ordered Lewis to pay restitution to Brooks’ family because the court was “presented with no other option.” He explained that the restitution is mandatory under Iowa law.

Lewis, was 15 when she stabbed Brooks in a Des Moines apartment.

She ran away from home to escape her abusive adoptive mother. She was sleeping in the halls of an apartment building when Christopher Brown, 28, took her in and began trafficking her to other men for sex, according to prosecutors.

Among those men she was being trafficked to was Brooks, who Lewis said raped her multiple times before she killed him. She recalled being forced at knife point to go to his apartment for sex. After Brooks raped her for what would end up being the last time, Lewis grabbed a knife off a bedside table and stabbed him.

Neither police nor prosecutors dispute Lewis side of the story that she was trafficked and assaulted, but prosecutors allege that Brooks was not an immediate threat because he was asleep when he was stabbed.

Iowa doesn’t have a safe harbor law that gives trafficking victims in other states some level of criminal immunity.

Lewis will be transported to a halfway house in Des Moines and will wear a GPS tracking device to ensure she does not fall “back into the lifestyle that you thus far left,” Judge Porter said. She will also have to complete 200 hours of community service.

“My spirit has been burned, but still glows through the flames,” she read from a prepared statement prior to her sentencing. “Hear me roar, see me glow, and watch me grow.”

“I am a survivor,” she continued.

Prosecutors say Lewis shouldn’t have labeled herself a survivor, claiming she failed to take responsibility for Brooks’ death and left his children without a father.

The judge asked Lewis to explain the poor choices she made that led to the stabbing and noted that she sometimes did not wish to follow rules in juvenile detention.

“The next five years of your life will be full of rules you disagree with, I’m sure of it,” Porter said, later adding, “This is the second chance that you’ve asked for. You don’t get a third.”

Lewis said, “I took a person’s life. My intentions that day were not to just 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.”

She said she regretted the stabbing, “but to say there is one victim is absurd.”