Pieper Lewis was a 15-year-old runaway when she stabbed her 37-year-old abuser, Zachary Brooks, more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment in June 2020. Lewis, now 17, was initially charged with first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing. Last year, she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and wounding. Each charge is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Pieper Lewis pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the 2020 killing of her rapist Zachary Brooks.AP Polk County Judge David M. Porter suspended Lewis’ prison sentence Tuesday — meaning if she violates her probation she could be sent to prison to serve 20 years. The judge said Lewis was ordered to pay her rapist’s estate because in court she “had no other choice,” adding that restitution is mandatory under Iowa state law. He will be moved to a halfway house in Des Moines, where he will wear a GPS tracking device to ensure he doesn’t “fall back into the lifestyle you’ve been leading,” Porter said, according to the New York Times. She will also be required to complete 200 hours of community service. Lewis was sentenced to five years of probation, 200 hours of community service and ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to the rapists’ estate.AP She had escaped an abusive stepmother and was sleeping in the hallways of an apartment building when Christopher Brown, 28, took her in and began pimping her out to other men for sex, officials said. One of the men was Brooks, who raped her several times in the weeks before his death, Lewis said. The teenager recalled being forced at knifepoint by the 28-year-old to go to Brooks’ flat to have sex with him. After Brooks raped her again, she said she grabbed a knife from a nightstand and stabbed him. Neither police nor prosecutors disputed that Lewis was sexually assaulted, but prosecutors argued that he stabbed Brooks while he was sleeping and was not a threat to Lewis at the time. Lewis has spent the past two years confined to a juvenile detention center, where she earned her GED while unable to communicate with her friends and family. “My spirit has been burned, but it still shines through the flames,” she read from a prepared statement before her sentencing: “Hear me roar, see me shine, and see me grow.” “I am a survivor,” he added. Prosecutors took issue with Lewis referring to herself as a victim during the case. They said he did not take responsibility for the killing and left the Brooks children fatherless. Lewis, 17, was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution Tuesday.AP The judge asked Lewis about the choices he had made that led to the stabbing of Brooks. “I took a man’s life,” he replied, according to the Times. “My intentions that day were not just to go out and take someone’s life. In my mind I felt that I was not safe and I felt that I was in danger, resulting in the actions. But it doesn’t take away the fact that a crime was committed.” He said he regretted what happened that day, “but to say there is a victim is absurd.” Iowa is not one of dozens of US states that have safe harbor laws that provide trafficking victims with some degree of criminal immunity. Lewis spoke in the courtroom before her sentencing by Polk County District Judge David M. Porter on Tuesday.AP The Hawkeye state has an affirmative defense law that gives some leeway to victims if the victim committed the crime “under duress by the threat of serious injury to another, provided the defendant reasonably believed that such injury was imminent.” Prosecutors argued Tuesday that Lewis waived that affirmative defense when she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and wounding. By postal cables
