Appeal raises $150,000 for girl ordered to pay family of accused rapist she killed

Donors to a GoFundMe appeal have raised enough money to pay the $150,000 restitution an Iowa court ruled a teenage human trafficking victim must pay to the family of her accused rapist, whom she stabbed to death.

Pieper Lewis, 17, was originally charged with first-degree murder in the June 2020 killing of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks of Des Moines. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter and willful injury, both punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

On Tuesday a Polk county district judge, David M Porter, deferred those prison sentences. If Lewis violates any portion of her probation, she could be sent to prison to serve that 20-year term.

A former teacher of Lewis, Leland Schipper, organized the GoFundMe appeal, which by Wednesday lunchtime had surpassed the required amount.

Lewis was 15 when she stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment. Officials have said Lewis was a runaway seeking to escape an abusive life with her adopted mother and was sleeping in the hallways of an apartment building when a 28-year-old man took her in before trafficking her to other men for sex.

Lewis said one of those men was Brooks, who raped her multiple times in the weeks before his death. She recounted being forced at knifepoint by the 28-year-old man to go with Brooks to his apartment for sex. She told officials that after Brooks raped her yet again, she grabbed a knife from a bedside table and stabbed him in a fit of rage.

Police and prosecutors have not disputed that Lewis was sexually assaulted and trafficked. But prosecutors argued that Brooks was asleep when he was stabbed and not 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.

Karl Schilling, spokesperson for the Iowa organization for victim assistance, said a bill to create a safe harbor law for trafficking victims passed the Iowa house this year but stalled in the senate amid concern from law enforcement groups that it was too broad.

Prosecutors argued that Lewis waived that affirmative defense when she pleaded guilty to manslaughter and willful injury.