Jordan Karlesson
A GoFundMe campaign on Thursday far exceeded its goal of raising money to help a teen sex trafficking victim pay $150,000 to her rapist’s family.
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Pieper Lewis, an Iowa teen who stabbed Zachary Brooks to death, avoided prison time Tuesday, the Des Moines Register reported. However, the judge sentenced her to probation and ordered her to pay $150,000 to Brooks’ estate.
If Lewis violates the terms of her probation, she could get 20 years in prison.
Public outrage swelled around the sex trafficking incident, leading one of Lewis’ former teachers to set up the GoFundMe campaign.
“I was incredibly proud of her,” Leland Schipper wrote on the campaign’s webpage. “She was powerful, and she brought me to tears. The judge then studied all the evidence in Pieper Lewis’ case carefully and decided that she did not deserve to spend time in an adult prison.”
Pieper Lewis
Schipper noted that Lewis was only 15-years-old at the time of the incident, which occurred in June 2020. It allegedly happened after she ran away from her abusive mother earlier that year.
As the Register reported, prosecutors didn’t dispute allegations that Lewis underwent sexual assault and trafficking.
“[Lewis] found herself sleeping in the stairwell of one of the most dangerous apartment complexes in Des Moines; a girl that was ultimately preyed upon by men twice her age who traded her body for drugs,” Schipper said. “These men physically asualted [sic], raped, and sex trafficked Pieper on multiple occasions.”
Lewis pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and willful injury of Brooks, according to the Register. At the time of his death, he was a 37-year-old father of three.
Pieper reportedly stabbed Brooks with a knife she discovered on a bedside table in his apartment following another alleged assault.
