What we know about Pieper Lewis and her escape from an Iowa residential corrections facility

By Dakin Andone, CNN

Nearly two months after receiving a deferred judgment for killing a man she said had raped her, Iowa teenager and sex trafficking victim Pieper Lewis walked away from the residential corrections facility where she was serving probation, prompting authorities to issue a warrant for her arrest.

The teen, who garnered national headlines after a judge ordered she serve five years probation and pay $150,000 in restitution to the family of the man she killed, has yet to be found.

Here’s what we know about her case, her escape and what it might mean for her sentence.

She cut off an electronic monitoring device

Lewis, 18, left the Fresh Start Women’s Center at 6:19 a.m. Friday, according to Jerry Evans, the executive director of the Fifth Judicial District Department of Corrections, who told CNN in an email Sunday she walked away from the facility after “cutting off her electronic monitoring tracking device.”

At the time of Evans’ email, Lewis’ whereabouts were unknown, he said.

The Des Moines facility from which Lewis escaped is a residential corrections facility, per the Fifth Judicial Circuit Department of Corrections website. It “accepts residents with varied legal status,” who might be admitted “as a condition of probation or parole,” it says. The program aims to “provide a safe and holistic approach to supervision that seeks to educate, support and advocate for all women to transform their lives,” the website says.

She admitted killing a man she said raped her

Lewis became a resident at the center after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter and willful injury in connection to the killing of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks when she was 15. Lewis said in her plea agreement that Brooks had raped her multiple times in 2020.

In the plea agreement, Lewis outlined for the court the series of events that she said led up to the killing, beginning with her running away from home due to what she said was an abusive home environment. She was eventually taken in by a man who she said trafficked her, forcing her to have sex with other men in exchange for money. Brooks was one of those men, according to Lewis, who described in her agreement being repeatedly assaulted, including while she was unconscious.

On May 31, 2020, the man with whom Lewis lived confronted her with a knife and forced her to go to Brooks’ apartment, where Lewis said she was forced to drink vodka and eventually fell asleep. At one point, she woke up to find Brooks was raping her, she said.

Later, Brooks fell asleep and Lewis, “overcome with rage” at the realization he had raped her again, “immediately grabbed the knife from his nightstand and began stabbing him,” she said in the plea agreement.

She faced decades in prison — and got probation

Lewis faced up to 20 years in prison for her guilty pleas. But in September, Polk County District Judge David Porter handed down a deferred judgment, meaning the plea could be expunged if she completed the probationary sentence at a residential correctional facility.

The court additionally had to impose a $150,000 restitution fee under Iowa law, the judge said. He also ruled she should serve 200 hours of community service and pay more than $4,000 in civil penalties.

A GoFundMe on her behalf raised half a million dollars

Lewis’ case prompted an outpouring of generosity by strangers who wanted to help cover the restitution: A GoFundMe page set up by her former teacher raised more than $560,000 — several times the amount the teen actually owed.

Money collected beyond the court-ordered $150,000 fee would help Lewis attend college, start her own business and “explore ways to help other young victims of sex crimes,” teacher Leland Schippe wrote on the crowdsource campaign’s page, which has since stopped accepting donations.

Still, it wasn’t clear if Lewis could actually use the money to pay the fee under Iowa law, her attorneys told the Des Moines Register.

What her escape could mean for her sentence

It’s not entirely clear how exactly Lewis’ leaving the probation center might impact the judgment she received in September.

After she left the women’s center Friday, authorities filed a “probation violation report,” Evans, the corrections official, told CNN, “recommending revocation of her probation.”

“A warrant for her arrest was subsequently issued that remains outstanding,” he said.

The probation violation report, filed Friday with Iowa’s Judicial District Department of Correctional Services, notes an alarm sounded at the facility at 6:19 a.m., notifying staff that a door had been opened. A residential officer then saw Lewis exiting the facility through a door, per the report obtained by CNN.

The report, which was signed by a probation officer and a residential supervisor, goes on to request the warrant for Lewis’ arrest, adding, “It is further ordered that her deferred judgments revoked and original sentence imposed.”

CNN requested a copy of the arrest warrant and was told by a spokesperson for Iowa’s Judicial Branch that “all information filed with the court to secure an arrest warrant shall remain sealed until after an arrest is made and a return of arrest warrant is filed.”

Other victims penalized for killing alleged assaulters

Lewis’ attorney was pleased with the deferred sentence, saying in September it would allow her to “live a full life.”

“Pieper is extremely grateful for all the love, compassion, and support that she has received. Anyone that has met her immediately falls in love with her,” the attorney, Matt Sheeley, said. “She’s a remarkable young woman who has remarkable courage. And she’s amazed at all the love she’s received — she’s just blown away. We’re all frankly blown away.”

Some advocates for victims of sexual violence felt differently, voicing concern about Lewis’ ability to serve out the sentence given the extent of her trauma and how her case echoed others in recent years in the US, in which teenagers — often people of color — have been legally penalized or convicted of killing their sex trafficker or assaulter.

“Too often, we see a tragic pattern where the criminal justice system punishes the victims of horrific crimes, rather than the true perpetrators,” said Lindsey Ruff, an attorney who represented groups in a brief supporting Chrystul Kizer, who is facing a life sentence in Wisconsin for killing the man she said forced her into sex trafficking. After a state Supreme Court ruling in July, Kizer will be allowed to argue in court her actions were a “direct result” of being trafficked, a defense that could see charges against her acquitted.

Many trafficking victims like Kizer or Lewis “suffer severe psychological consequences as result of trafficking, which can lead them to enact in seemingly anomalous ways,” Ruff said, including those that seem “self-destructive.”

“The causal link between victimization and criminality creates a cycle where victims are penalized for their reactions to their own trauma,” she said.

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CNN’s Michelle Watson, Dalila-Johari Paul, Chuck Johnston and Lucy Kafanov contributed to this report.