A 17-year-old Iowa teen could face up to 20 years in prison after fatally stabbing her alleged rapist, per People. Pieper Lewis pleaded guilty in June 2021 to voluntary manslaughter and willful injury in the June 2020 killing of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks.
Court documents cited that the teenage girl allegedly stabbed Brooks 30 times in the chest, arms, and groin after he sexually assaulted her multiple times in the days leading up to the killing. The teenager, who was 15 at the time of the incident, wrote on her plea agreement that she ran away from home three times between January and March 2020 before she started sleeping in the hallway of a building in Des Moines.
She noted that she briefly stayed with a man in the building but eventually left after he became "verbally, physically and sexually abusive towards me shortly after I moved into his apartment."
Reportedly arranged with men to have sex for money
After leaving the man, she moved in with another man who lived just across the hall and stayed with him from mid-April until her arrest on June 2, 2020. Shortly after she moved in, the man started to create a dating profile for her and put it on a dating website.
"[The man] would then arrange for me to have sex with men for money," Lewis said in her statement.
The young girl was introduced to Brooks in May 2020 and stayed with him for only three days, wherein she alleged that she was sexually assaulted on multiple occasions. She also told the authorities that she was forced to return to Brook's apartment by the man she was staying with to get marijuana.
NBC reported that when the girl refused to go, the man instantly grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter and pressed it against her neck. The man cut her neck with the knife, which frightened her. She was only freed when she agreed to meet with Brooks.
Brooks picked her up in a parking lot on May 31 and brought her back to his apartment, where he forced her to drink some vodka and smoke pot before sexually assaulting her.
The age of consent in Iowa is sixteen-years-old
After the said attack, Brooks fell asleep. When she was about to leave, she saw a knife with a black sheath on his nightstand, and it dawned on her that he had raped her yet again and was filled with rage. Without thinking, she quickly grabbed the knife and began stabbing him.
She was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, per Des Moines Register.
According to the Register, the age of consent in Iowa is 16. Lewis recently graduated from high school while being held in juvenile detention.
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