Pieper Lewis: Teen who killed her accused rapist escapes from woman’s facility

After being sentenced to five years of supervised probation and ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to the family of her accused rapist, Pieper Lewis escaped custody.

According to CNN, Lewis “walked away from the Fresh Start Women’s Center on Friday at 6:19 a.m. after cutting off her electronic monitoring tracking device.”

District Executive Director Jerry Evans also told CNN in an email Sunday morning that,

At the moment his whereabouts are unknown.

The Pieter Lewis story

Pieper Lewis was a 15-year-old girl who killed a man who she says raped her multiple times while he was trafficking her.

She was initially charged and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the murder of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks, but instead, Judge Porter gave her a deferred sentence, five years probation, placement in a women’s facility with a GPS tracker and ordered him to pay $150,000 in restitution to the family of his accused rapist in the hope that he will not return to his old lifestyle.

Lewis also claims that Brooks gave her alcohol and marijuana and forced her to participate in a sex trafficking ring. He also says that he had sex with her multiple times while he was unconscious.

CNN reports that Lewis is one of several teens who have been “legally sanctioned or convicted of killing their trafficker or sex offender in recent years,” emphasizing that people of color are often affected.

One person in Lewis’s corner refused to sit back and do nothing. His former math teacher started a GoFundMe to help pay restitution that was owed and helped raise more than $373,000.

Pieper Lewis, 17, was recently ordered to pay $150,000 to the family of the accused drug dealer and rapist she fatally stabbed. Now a GoFundMe, started by Lewis’s former math teacher, has raised more than $235,000 to help the Iowa teen pay restitution.

— Ben Crump (@AbogadoCrump) September 15, 2022

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Cynthia Brown’s story

Cyntoia Brown, another sex trafficking victim turned advocate for criminal justice reform whose story premiered in a 2020 Netflix documentary, spoke out in support of Lewis saying:

She was a victim in this situation. Not only will she have to serve time in a facility, but for the next five years, anything she does could result in her having to serve a 20-year sentence. So she is not truly free.

Brown was sentenced to life in prison for killing a 43-year-old man who paid $150 to have sex with her when she was just 16 years old. She was later granted clemency and she was released after spending nearly half of her life in prison.

While it is unclear where Pieper Lewis is, officials are now calling for her parole to be revoked due to this parole violation and have issued a warrant for her arrest.