Chrystul Kizer, a 24-year-old woman from Milwaukee who said she was a victim of sex trafficking by the man she killed, was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Monday. Advocates for sex trafficking survivors expressed their outrage over the decision. Kizer pleaded guilty in May to reckless homicide for the June 2018 death of 34-year-old Randall Volar in Kenosha, Wisconsin, when she was just 17.
During the sentencing, Kenosha County Judge David Wilk acknowledged the circumstances surrounding Kizer’s relationship with Volar.
“You are not permitted to be the instrument of his reckoning,” he said. “To hold otherwise is to endorse a descent into lawlessness and chaos.”
Why did Kizer get sentenced if she was sex trafficked by the man she killed?
According to Kizer’s defense attorney, Jennifer Bias, Volar contacted Kizer when she was 16 after she posted an advertisement for prostitution to feed her siblings. At that time, Volar was under investigation by the Kenosha Police Department for sexual offenses involving underage girls as young as 12.
Randall Volar abused underage Black girls
Investigators discovered that Volar had been abusing multiple underage Black girls.
He was arrested in February 2018, charged, and then released without bail. Four months later, in June 2018, Kizer shot and killed Volar, set his house on fire, and fled in his BMW.
Prosecutors initiated a case against Kizer, which involved a 2022 ruling allowing her to seek immunity based on a sex trafficking defense. Wisconsin’s law, enacted in 2008, allows victims of human and child sex trafficking to use an affirmative defense for any crimes committed as a direct result of those offenses, even if no one was prosecuted for the trafficking.
The Washington Post reported that Volar had filmed himself sexually abusing Kizer multiple times.
Kizer did not pursue trial, instead took a plea
Court records indicate that Kizer chose not to go to trial, where she could have faced a potential life sentence if convicted. Instead, she accepted a plea deal for a lesser charge of second-degree reckless homicide.
Before her sentencing, Kizer quoted passages from the Book of Genesis and Psalms, pleading for mercy.
“I don’t know where to start, but I’m asking for your generosity in my sentence today,” she said. “I understand that I committed sins that put the Volar family in a lot of pain.”
