Earlier this week, an Iowa judge ordered a teenage girl who survived human trafficking by killing her rapist to pay the man’s family $150,000. Outraged, people around the country began sending her donations—and they’ve already raised more than half a million dollars.
Pieper Lewis was 15 years old when she fatally stabbed Zachary Brooks, then 37, after he raped her repeatedly over the course of weeks in 2020. Another man had allegedly been trafficking her after finding her homeless; that man had forced her to go over to Brooks’ house by holding a knife to her throat.
The police arrested Lewis a day after the killing, and prosecutors charged her with first-degree murder. Last year she pleaded guilty to lesser charges of voluntary manslaughter and willful injury, crimes that are each punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Her sentencing hearing was on Tuesday.
Polk County District Judge David Porter ordered Lewis to serve five years of probation, noting that she already spent about two years in juvenile detention during her legal proceedings. He acknowledged that it was unfair to force her to also pay so much money to her abuser’s family as restitution, but said he had “no other option.” The
— source motherjones.com | Samantha Michaels | Sep 18, 2022