Pieper Lewis had never known freedom and had never enjoyed the support and guidance necessary for children to succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 17-year-old pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and willful injury for fatally stabbing Zachary Brooks, 37, who authorities admitted raped her multiple times in 2020 when she was 15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brooks, whom prosecutors acknowledged purchased Pieper from a sex trafficking ring, also was accused of repeatedly drugging and beating the teen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Polk County District Judge David Porter sentenced Pieper to five years of supervised probation and ordered her to pay $150,000 restitution to the man\u2019s family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The judge said Iowa law required the restitution to the family, as well as $4,000 to the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe court is cognizant that you and your supporters will be frustrated with the imposition of the $150,000 in restitution to Mr. Brooks\u2019 estate,\u201d Porter told Pieper. \u201cThis court is presented with no other option, other than which is dictated by the law of this state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also told Pieper that she\u2019s to refrain from getting into any trouble, or he\u2019d otherwise impose a 20-year prison sentence. However, if she meets the conditions of her sentence, the court could expunge Pieper\u2019s record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In court, Pieper spoke about overcoming her challenging situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy spirit has been burned but still glows through the flames,\u201d she read from a prepared statement. \u201cHear me roar, see me glow, and watch me grow. I am a survivor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While support for Pieper had been elusive over the years \u2014 she was raised in foster care and shipped from home to home \u2014 her high school math teacher Leland Schipper stepped in to offer what no one had ever done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Schipper started a GoFundMe crowdsourcing page<\/a> for Pieper to help offset the cost of the $150,000 judgment and to help her restart her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cToday, my former student, Pieper Lewis, bravely took the microphone during her sentencing hearing and told the courtroom that her voice mattered,\u201d Schipper wrote on the fundraising site. \u201cI was incredibly proud of her. She was powerful, and she brought me to tears.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schipper said Pieper, who had already spent nearly three years in juvenile detention awaiting trial, did not deserve to spend time in an adult prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cInstead, the judge gave her five years of probation. He decided that 834 days she spent in juvenile detention awaiting her sentencing was enough \u2018punishment\u2019 for a then fifteen-year-old girl who had been kicked out of her home and found herself sleeping in the stairwell of one of the most dangerous apartment complexes in Des Moines,\u201d the math teacher wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fundraising effort has netted more than $325,000 to date, and Schipper called her sentence a \u201ccompassionate outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like many who\u2019ve reacted to the restitution part of her sentence, Schipper asserted that Pieper \u201cdoes not owe that man\u2019s family justice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPieper does not deserve to be financially burdened for the rest of her life because the state of Iowa wrote a law that fails to give judges any discretion as to how it is applied,\u201d he said. \u201cThis law doesn\u2019t make sense in many cases, but in this case, it\u2019s morally unjustifiable. A child who was raped, under no circumstances, should owe the rapist\u2019s family money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The post <\/em>Fundraiser Tops $300K for Teen Ordered to Pay Her Alleged Rapist\u2019s Family<\/em><\/a> appeared first on <\/em>The Washington Informer<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pieper Lewis had never known freedom and had never enjoyed the support and guidance necessary for children to succeed. The 17-year-old pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and willful injury for fatally stabbing Zachary Brooks, 37, who authorities admitted raped her multiple times in 2020 when she was 15. Brooks, whom prosecutors acknowledged purchased Pieper from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1356,1358,1357],"class_list":["post-2243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-pieper-lewis","tag-polk-county-district-judge-david-porter","tag-zachary-brooks","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2244,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions\/2244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}