This teenager was convicted of killing her rapist. She now she has escaped

An 18-year-old sex-trafficking victim who pleaded guilty to killing a man she said raped her escaped from a women's center where she was serving her probation sentence, New York state authorities said. Iowa.

Pieper Lewis was seen leaving the Fresh Start Women's Center building in Des Moines shortly after 6:15 a.m. Friday;

her that day she lost track of her monitored by a GPS monitor, according to a parole violation report.

Authorities issued an arrest warrant for Lewis and asked that his deferred sentence be reversed and the original sentence imposed, local television reported KCCI.

The young woman could thus face up to 20 years in prison.

They arrest a subject after trying to abuse a young woman in a store bathroom

Sept.

21, 202200:36

Prosecutors called the probation sentence she received in September merciful for a teenager who endured horrific abuse, though the $150,000 restitution she was ordered to pay was questioned.

A GoFundMe campaign raised more than $560,000 to cover the payment.

Polk County Judge David Porter told Lewis that his sentence of probation was "the second chance he's asked for."

"You won't get a third," he added, as reported by the Des Moines Register.

[A judge annuls a conviction for rape considering that the young man "had enough punishment" with five months in prison]

If Lewis had completed his five years of probation, the prison sentence would have been cancelled.

Lewis pleaded guilty last year to involuntary manslaughter and intentional injury in the slaying of Zachary Brooks, 37, a married father of two.

Lewis was 15 years old when he stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment in June 2020.

Lewis said she had been sexually exploited by Brooks, who forced her to have sex multiple times.

She said that she stabbed him in a fit of rage.

Police and prosecutors did not deny that Lewis was raped and was a victim of sex trafficking.

The family of the Latina soldier Vanessa Guillén who was murdered at her base is suing the US government.

Aug. 14, 202200:30

"I am a survivor"

The young woman escaped an abusive life with her adoptive mother and was sleeping in the hallways of a Des Moines apartment building when the 28-year-old man took her in, she explained.

But later he started putting her on dating websites to get her to have sex with other men.

Iowa is not among dozens of states that have a so-called safe harbor law, which gives victims of trafficking at least some level of criminal immunity.

Pieper Lewis during a hearing on September 13 in Des Moine.AP

[A young black man was wrongfully convicted of rape.

Almost 40 years later he was exonerated]

Lewis, who took her general education developmental exam while in juvenile detention, explained in a statement before her sentencing that she struggled during her time there, saying she was treated "like fragile glass." and he was not allowed to communicate with his friends or family.

"My spirit has been burned, but it continues to shine in the flames. Hear me roar, see me shine and see me grow," he read in a statement.

"I am a survivor," she asserted.

With information from