Pieper Lewis, 17, was sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty last year to involuntary manslaughter and malicious wounding in the June 2020 slaying of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks 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. 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. Lewis was 15 when she stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment. Officials said Lewis was a runaway trying to escape an abusive life with her adopted mother and was sleeping in the hallways of a Des Moines apartment building when a 28-year-old man picked her up before forcibly trafficking her to other men for sex. Lewis said one of those men was Brooks and that he had raped her several times in the weeks before his death. She said the 28-year-old forced her at knifepoint to go with Brooks to his apartment for sex. She told officials that after Brooks raped her again, she grabbed a knife from a nightstand and stabbed Brooks 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. Iowa is not among the dozens of states that have a so-called safe harbor law that gives trafficking victims at least some level of criminal immunity. 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. “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. The Associated Press does not typically name victims of sexual harassment, but Lewis has agreed to have her name used in stories about her case in the past. 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. “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. “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.
