A teenage victim of human trafficking initially charged with first-degree murder after stabbing her accused rapist was sentenced Tuesday to five years of strict probation and ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to the man’s family. Pieper Lewis, 17, was sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty last year to manslaughter and wounding in the June 2020 slaying of Zachary Brooks, 37, of Des Moines. Both charges were punishable by up to 10 years in prison. . Polk County District Judge David M. Porter on Tuesday suspended those prison terms, meaning that if Lewis violates any part of her probation, she could be sent to prison to serve that 20-year term. Story continues below ad As for having to pay her rapist’s estate, “this court has no choice,” Porter said, noting that restitution is mandated under Iowa law upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court.
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Lewis was 15 when she stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment in 2020. At the time, she was a repeat runaway who had been captured by a man who posed as her boyfriend while trafficking her for sex. In the weeks before the stabbing, Lewis said Brooks had raped her multiple times despite her pleas to stop. She was forced at knifepoint into Brooks’ apartment by the man who trafficked her. The last time Brooks raped her, Lewis grabbed a knife from the nightstand and stabbed him repeatedly in a fit of rage. Police and prosecutors have not disputed that Lewis was sexually assaulted and trafficked. However, prosecutors argued that Brooks was asleep at the time of the stabbing and did not pose an immediate danger to Lewis.
Lewis’s story
Pieper Lewis gives her statement during a sentencing hearing, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022, in Des Moines, Iowa. Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Des Moines Register via AP
In Lewis’ testimony, according to the New York Times, the teenager had left an abusive home with her adopted mother three times in three months in 2020. Initially, she stayed with the older sister of a classmate who gave her a place to sleep in exchange for babysitting services, but that arrangement later fell apart. Story continues below ad With nowhere to live, Lewis began sleeping in the hallway of the apartment building where she lived with her classmate’s sister. A male neighbor took her in, but that relationship turned violent and Lewis left. Another neighbor, Christopher Brown, 28, offered to let her stay with him and they soon began a relationship, with Lewis later saying he thought Brown was her boyfriend.
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In her statement, Lewis says Brown signed her up to dating sites and arranged for her to have sex with men for money. She said Brown did this about seven to eight times while staying at his apartment from April to June 2, 2020. In May, Brown told Lewis he needed to stay at an acquaintance’s house while his daughter and her mother were visiting. “Mr. Brown told me that Mr. Brooks would want to have sex with me since he was allowing me to stay with him,” she wrote in her statement. “I did not want to have sex with Mr. Brooks because I thought Mr. Brown was the boy. I didn’t want to go to Mr. Brooks’s apartment, but I had nowhere else to go.” Trending Stories
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Story continues below ad While staying at Brooks’ apartment, Lewis says the 37-year-old made her drink alcohol and smoke marijuana until she passed out. He then raped her five times, she says. After returning to Brown’s apartment, the trafficker told her later that month to return to Brooks’ apartment to get them marijuana. “He told me I had to ‘flip that trick’ to ‘put some weed on us,’” she said.
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Lewis refused, and Brown “grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter and pressed it to my throat,” she wrote in her statement. Brown pulled out the knife when she agreed to go. On June 1, Brooks picked up Lewis from Brown and took her back to his apartment. Lewis says Brooks was drunk at the time and hoped she would fall asleep while watching a movie. “I tried to stay calm and thought he was going to pass out and I was going to leave his apartment at first light,” she said. Instead, Brooks forced her to drink vodka and smoke marijuana, causing her to fall asleep. When Lewis woke up, Brooks was raping her. She asked him to stop but soon passed out again. When she woke up later that night her clothes were missing. Story continues below ad
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Lewis says she “saw a box of KY Jelly and a knife with a black sheath on one of his nightstands next to his bed” while Brooks was sleeping next to her. She realized Brooks had raped her again and, “without thinking, I immediately grabbed the knife from his nightstand and started stabbing him,” she said. He says he showered and drove one of Brooks’ cars back to Brown’s apartment. Louis was arrested the next day. During Lewis’ sentencing hearing Tuesday, her attorneys accused Brown of aiding and abetting sex trafficking — but police have yet to press charges. Polk County District Attorney John Sarcone told The New York Times, “The matter is still pending and we do not comment on pending cases.” In the US, dozens of states have enacted safe harbor laws that provide trafficking victims with some level of criminal immunity from prosecution. Iowa is not one of those states.
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“I’m a survivor”
Lewis, who earned her GED while in juvenile detention, acknowledged in a statement before her sentencing that she struggled with the structure of her detention, including “being treated like broken glass” or not being allowed to communicate with her friends or family. Story continues below ad “My spirit has been burned, but it still shines through the flames,” he read from a prepared statement. “Hear me roar, see me shine, and see me grow.” “I am a survivor,” he added. Prosecutors took issue with Lewis calling herself the victim in the case and said she did not take responsibility for Brooks’ stabbing and “left his children without a father.” The judge teased Lewis with repeated requests to explain what poor choices she made that led to Brooks’ stabbing and expressed concern that she sometimes didn’t want to follow the rules set for her in juvenile detention. In Lewis’s deposition, she said she wished “the events of June 1, 2020 never happened, but to say there is a victim is absurd.”
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‘Second chance’
“The next five years of your life are going to be full of rules you disagree with, I’m sure of it,” Porter said. He later added: “This is the second chance you asked for. You don’t get a third.” Carl Schilling with the Iowa Victims Assistance Agency said a bill to create a safe harbor law for trafficking victims passed the Iowa House earlier this year but stalled in the Senate amid concerns from law enforcement groups that it was too broad. Story continues below ad “There was a task force set up to resolve the issues,” Shilling said. “Hopefully it will be repeated next year.” Iowa has an affirmative defense law that gives crime victims some leeway if the victim committed the violation “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. — with files from The Associated Press If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse or is involved in an abusive situation, visit the Canadian Resource Center for Victims of Crime for help. They can also be reached toll free at 1-877-232-2610. 2:03 N.S. Workshop seeks to improve resources for survivors of human trafficking Previous Video Next Video © 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
