An Iowa judge ruled on Tuesday that a teenage human trafficking victim must serve five years of closely supervised probation and pay $150,000 in restitution to the family of her accused rapist, whom she stabbed to death.
Pieper Lewis was a 15-year-old runaway seeking to escape an abusive life with her stepmother when she killed her accused rapist, 37-year-old Zachary Brooks, in June 2020, by stabbing him more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment.
Lewis, now 17, has maintained that she was trafficked against her will to Brooks for sex multiple times and stabbed him in a fit of rage.
Police and prosecutors have not disputed that Lewis was sexually abused and trafficked. But officials argued that Brooks was asleep at the time he was stabbed, and did not present an immediate danger to her….