Chrystul Kizer sentenced to 11 years in prison for killing man who ‘raped & sold her for sex when she was 16 years old’
A TRAFFICKING survivor has been sentenced to over a decade behind bars for killing the man who allegedly sold her for sex as a teenager.
On Monday, a Wisconsin judge sentenced Chrystul Kizer to 11 years plus five years of extended supervision.
She pled guilty to reckless homicide by a Wisconsin court earlier this year but her legal team had hoped for a lighter sentence due to the circumstances surrounding the killing.
Kizer met Randy Volar in Kenosha — about 40 miles south of Milwaukee — when she was 16 and he was 33.
He allegedly subjected her to a series of assaults and sold her online for sex for over a year.
Volar paid for Kizer to take an Uber from her home in Milwaukee to Kenosha in June 2018, when she was 17, to meet again.
She then shot Volar in the head and burned down his house before stealing his BMW.
She killed him so that he would stop molesting her, she told her boyfriend, according to police.
Defense attorneys had argued that the murder was a direct result of the suffering and fear Kizer felt due to Volar’s actions, “justifying” the crime.
Kizer’s representatives also argued that the state failed to protect the teen because the police had already suspected Volar of trafficking children.
Police arrested Volar on suspicion of child abuse and pornography in February 2018, but failed to file charges and instead released him.
Prosecutors argued that she could not be eligible for immunity because the crime was premeditated, as evidenced by her taking the murder weapon with her from Kenosha.
IMMUNITY FOR TRAFFICKING VICTIMS
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that a state law protecting trafficking victims of criminal liability for offenses committed as a direct result of being trafficked extends to first-degree intentional homicide, according to the Associated Press.
Groups supporting victims of sex crimes argued that Kizer should have the opportunity to prove that her actions were “a direct result of the violence she experienced,” the Chicago Community Bond Fund said in a statement.
She was tasked with convincing the judge that the killing was a direct result of self-defense to be able to use the immunity established by the law.
But when she pled guilty to a reduced plea of reckless homicide in May, she could no longer claim self-defense or ask for immunity.
The maximum sentence for reckless homicide in Wisconsin is 25 years in prison, according to local Fox affiliate WITI.
PRECEDENT-SETTING DECISION
Legal experts nationwide were awaiting Kizer’s sentence to understand how widely Wisconsin law—and similar laws in other states — could be applied to a victim’s immunity claims.
Chrystul Kizer Investigation Timeline
- 2017: Kizer, 16, meets Volar, 33
- February 2018: Volar is arrested for child assault and pornography, and released the same day
- June 5, 2018: Police find Volar shot dead and his house on fire
- June 2018: Kizer is arrested on murder charges
- May 2024: Kizer pleads guilty to reckless homicide
- Aug 19, 2024: Kizer is sentenced to 11 years in jail and 5 years of supervision
“If we’re living in a civilized society, it begs the question, are we going to give immunity to people who are sexually abused to kill their abusers?” attorney Julius Kim told AP.
Over 40 states currently have some version of a law offering immunity to victims of human trafficking, but the extent to which crimes can be ignored varies greatly.
“The implications can be devastating. Attorneys general across the country are going to pay attention to see how this plays out.”
She will receive about two years off of the sentence for time served.
RACE MATTERS
Trafficking victims in the US are overwhelmingly women of color, while human traffickers are most often white men, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
About 2,000 people are charged or held in custody every year for human trafficking crimes.
Victims of human trafficking are disproportionately younger women and children from disadvantaged economic groups.
Police believe Volar had abused at least a dozen other underage Black girls in addition to Kizer. However, he was still released the same day he was arrested on charges of child abuse, according to The Washington Post.
At the same time, Black perpetrators of crimes against white people are more likely to receive a harsh sentence than Black convicts convicted of victimizing Black people or white people convicted of victimizing Black people, according to the Open Society Foundation.
Black people found guilty of capital crimes are about seven times more likely to receive the death sentence than white criminals convicted of the same crimes, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.