An 18-year-old sex trafficking victim from Iowa who admitted to killing a man she said had sexually assaulted her allegedly fled from a women’s shelter where she was serving her probation sentence, according to authorities.
A probation violation report states that Pieper Lewis was observed leaving the Fresh Start Women’s Center in Des Moines shortly after 6:15 a.m. on Friday and that her GPS monitor was disconnected at some point that day.
According to KCCI, a warrant for Lewis’ arrest was issued along with a request in the probation report that her deferred judgment be revoked and her original sentence is applied. She might spend as much as 20 years behind bars.
Although some questioned the $150,000 in reparations she had to pay, prosecutors described the probationary term she received in September as lenient for a kid who had suffered terrible abuse. Over $560,000 was received via a GoFundMe effort to repay the restitution and her additional expenses.
Lewis’s sentenced
Lewis was sentenced to probation, which Polk County Judge David Porter said was “the second chance you asked for.” You don’t get a third, according to the Des Moines Register. The prison sentence would have been erased if she had successfully completed five years of strictly supervised probation.
Zachary Brooks, a married father of two who was killed in June 2020, was 37 years old. Lewis admitted last year to involuntary manslaughter and deliberate injury. When Lewis stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment, she was 15 years old.
Lewis claims that Brooks repeatedly forced her into having intercourse against her will, and in a fit of wrath, she stabbed him. She was sexually molested and trafficked, and this was acknowledged by the police and the prosecution.