HAM SANDWICH NATION UPDATE: Why sexual abuse victims like Pieper Lewis get convicted.

In 2020, Pieper Lewis killed her alleged rapist – a man she says began raping her when she was a mere 15 years old.

According to Lewis, the ordeal began when she ran away from an abusive home and ended up homeless. An older man took her in and began trafficking her at that point (forcing her to have sex with other men for money). One of those men was Zachary Brooks, who was 37 at the time. Lewis says Brooks assaulted her many times, including while she was unconscious, and said, “I suddenly realized that Mr. Brooks had raped me yet again and was overcome with rage.”

The man who trafficked Lewis was never charged with any crime, but Lewis was. She was charged with first degree murder and ultimately sentenced for voluntary manslaughter and willful injury. Her charges meant she faced 20 years in prison, but a judge reduced that to five years of probation after she served two years in a juvenile facility.

So now Lewis is free, but her ordeal is not over. If she in anyways violates that probation over the next five years (which is very easy to do given how difficult we make it for people to comply with these restrictions) she will automatically go back behind bars and serve her full sentence. And not only that, she’s also been given a $150,000 bill by the state of Iowa thanks to a mandatory financial restitution law that carries no exceptions, according to her judge.

Classical reference in headline: Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is A Crime.