An Iowa teenager who stabbed and killed a man who allegedly raped her was ordered to pay his family $150,000 in compensation and received five years’ probation.
Pieper Lewis, now 17, pleaded guilty last year to the voluntary manslaughter and willful injury of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks.
Brooks, a father of three who worked as a bus driver outside of Des Moines, was reportedly stabbed 30 times by the then-homeless teen. He allegedly raped the teen five times in the weeks before his death and at least once more on the night before she grabbed a knife from the bedside table in what she later described as a moment of “rage”.
“I suddenly realized that Mr. Brooks had raped me yet again and (I) was overcome with rage,” Lewis, who had been trafficked into sex work at 15, wrote in her plea agreement last year.
Lewis had originally been charged with first-degree murder in the 37-year-old’s death, a charge that in the state of Iowa carries a term of life in prison – except for juvenile defendants.
Last year, Lewis pleaded guilty to willful injury and involuntary manslaughter, charges that were punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Polk County District judge David M Porter on Tuesday deferred those prison sentences, meaning that if Lewis violates any portion of her probation, she could be sent to prison to serve that 20-year term.
“Well, Ms Lewis, this was the second chance you asked for. You don’t get a third. Do you understand that?” the Polk County judge asked Lewis after the sentencing on Tuesday, per a report in the Des Moines Register.
Before hearing the judge’s ruling, Lewis provided a last statement about the 1 June 2020 incident that had seen her locked up in the Polk County Juvenile Detention Center since the day of her arrest.
“I wish that never happened,” Lewis said of the killing on Tuesday. “But to say there’s only one victim in the story is absurd.”
Officials in the case reported how the then-15-year-old girl had run away from her family’s home, after claiming that her mother had become emotionally abusive after splitting from her father.
The Iowa teen then spent the next portion of her youth surfing from the couches of friends’ siblings to at one point living with a 40-year-old man. That man later became abusive and tried to force her to perform sex acts with his cousins, according to attorneys for the teen.
Before she moved in with the 28-year-old man who would later traffic the teen to have sex with men like Brooks, she was sleeping in the hallways of an apartment complex.
On the night before Lewis stabbed Brooks, she recounted to police officials that she’d been forced into his apartment by the 28-year-old man she’d been staying with at knifepoint.
Throughout the proceedings, officials and police haven’t contested the veracity in Lewis’ account that she was sexually assaulted and trafficked.
Prosecutors, however, have argued that the 37-year-old was asleep at the time he was stabbed and not an immediate danger to Lewis.
As for the funds that Lewis is now required to pay to her alleged attacker’s estate, the judge noted in his decision that “this court is presented with no other option,” as Iowa law requires people convicted of homicides to pay $150,000 in compensation.
That compensation, Lewis’ attorneys argued after Tuesday’s ruling, will likely be challenged by her legal team through an appeal or they may search out for other legal means, such as fundraising, to help the teen cover the sum.
“The world has been hard to Pieper,” Magdalena Reese, one of the attorneys for Lewis, said. “Instead of being hard, she made the conscious choice to be soft and to make her story make a difference in her life and the lives of others. Instead of turning silent and being hateful, she turned it around.”
Lewis received a deferred judgement, which means she can have her record expunged before completion of the sentence but will be sent to prison to serve that 20-year term if she violates any portion of her probation.
She will also be required to spend the five years’ probation at Fresh Start Women’s Center where she will be subject to GPS tracking and will have limited contact with her siblings until they turn 18. The judge also ordered the 17-year-old to serve 1,200 hours of community service, which will cover more than $4,000 in fines.
