Donations poured in Thursday on the GoFundMe site, where a campaign was created to help a young American woman accused of repeatedly raping her and forced prostitution in a context of forced prostitution and a $150,000 fine for relatives of the man she accused of murdering. .
The case of Pieper Lewis, 17, has moved on in the US, where minors exploited by pimps are fighting to assert their victim status in court.
“A raped child should not, under any circumstances, give money to the family of her rapist,” wrote Leland Schipper, one of her former teachers.
According to her account, reported in local media, the young woman found herself on the street at the age of 15 and was picked up by a man who forced her to have sex with others.
In 2020, in Des Moines, North America, she said she stabbed a thirty-year-old man who had paid her to rape him.
Initially charged with murder, the girl pleaded guilty to manslaughter and faced up to 20 years in prison.
The police and the prosecutor did not deny the fact that the minor was sexually exploited. On Tuesday, a judge decided to give him a “second chance” and ordered a suspended prison sentence.
If she abides by the conditions of her release for five years, her record will be vacated again.
But under Iowa’s state law requiring compensation for relatives of homicide victims, a magistrate ordered her killer’s family to pay $150,000.
Condemning the law as “morally unjustifiable”, Mr. Shipper later created a GoFundMe campaign.
Donations, often from $20 to $50, soon exceeded the set amount. More than $386,000 had been raised as of Thursday afternoon.
In a postscript, the author notes that the additional funds will fund the young woman’s studies.
