When a child sex trafficking victim kills her abuser, what punishment does she deserve? On Monday, a Wisconsin judge is set to decide the answer, ending six years of legal limbo for Chrystul Kizer and the family of the man she killed.
Before taking a plea deal earlier this year, Kizer, now 24, was facing a possible life sentence for shooting 34-year-old Randall Volar III when she was 17. Volar, who was White, had been filming his sexual abuse of Kizer, who is Black, for more than a year.
Months before his death, a 2019 Washington Post investigation showed, police and prosecutors had obtained video evidence that Volar was sexually abusing multiple Black girls who appeared to be underage. He was allowed to remain free. Then police found his house on fire, his body inside and two bullet wounds in his head.
Prosecutors in Kenosha, Wis., who declined to comment for this report, have long argued that Kizer premeditated the murder in order to steal Volar’s BMW. Kizer has maintained that she was acting in self-defense after being pinned down by Volar.
Now, after choosing to plead guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree reckless homicide with use of a dangerous weapon, Kizer is facing up to 30 years in prison. Speaking publicly for the first time in almost five years, Kizer said she chose a plea deal because she is ready to apologize to Volar’s family, bring her case to a close and hope that the judge will sentence her only to the time she has already served.
“I get to try to move on,” Kizer said in an interview from jail. “I can show the court that I’m not the same person that I was when I was 17.”
Her case has challenged the limits of the criminal justice system’s growing leniency for sex trafficking victims who end up behind bars. As police,prosecutors, judges and lawmakers have been trained regarding the trauma endured by those coerced into commercial sex, many states have implemented laws allowing trafficking victims to be cleared of certain charges — such as prostitution or theft — if they can prove their crimes occurred because they were being trafficked.
With the support of #MeToo movement advocates, celebrities and more than a million Change.org petition signers, Kizer tested whether an “affirmative defense” for trafficking victims could be used in a case of homicide. In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a groundbreaking ruling in her favor, granting her the ability to show a jury evidence of what she was experiencing at the time of the crime.
“Wisconsin’s law says that she should not be responsible for crimes committed as a direct result of her sexual exploitation. It doesn’t say ‘except for murder,’” said Diane Rosenfeld, who founded the gender violence program at Harvard Law School and has advocated on Kizer’s behalf. “The court should take into account the circumstances of her abuse.”
But rather than risk a life sentence at trial, Kizer chose to place her future in the hands of a Wisconsin circuit court judge, David Wilk. The judge, who has overseen the case for six years, will hear both sides’ final arguments on Monday.
Prosecutors and Volar’s family are expected to assert that Volar was the victim of a heinous crime worthy of a serious sentence. Kizer’s expert witnesses will contend that she was a victim, too, and is deserving of trauma treatment.
Then, Wilk will decide where Kizer will go next: a counseling program or a prison cell.
The crime
Kizer did not know what sex trafficking was when, at 16 years old, she signed herself up for a website notorious for it: Backpage.com. Under federal law, no minor can consent to being bought or sold for sex, regardless of the circumstances. But Kizer, whose family had recently lived in a Milwaukee homeless shelter after fleeing a domestic abuser, said she wanted to find her own way of earning money for snacks and school supplies.
Volar, she said, was the first to respond to her ad. In interviews and court filings, Kizer has said that in exchange for sex acts, Volar took her on dates and gave her cash, gifts and drugs. Records show that when she was arrested on charges related to driving a stolen car, Volar paid her bail. Though prosecutors have maintained that Volar’s only role in sex trafficking minors was as a buyer, Kizer said he would drive her to meet other men, then take the money.
Kizer once described Volar as her only friend. In July, as Kizer fidgeted in her orange jumpsuit, she said her understanding of what happened to her has changed.
“I was manipulated,” she said. “As a kid, I thought that I was supposed to listen to every adult.” But she realized “not all of them are good.”
Kizer was not the only young Black girl listening to Volar.
In February 2018, four months before Volar’s death, a 15-year-old called 911 from Volar’s house, saying a man had given her drugs and was going to kill her. Officers found her in the street, drugged and shirtless. She alleged that Volar had been paying her for sex since she was 14. She warned them that he was also filming his abuse of other girls, including one named “Chrystal.”
Police found “hundreds” of videos of child sexual abuse in Volar’s home, including more than 20 he’d filmed himself. Some of those videos showed Kizer.
Volar was arrested and charged with child enticement and child sexual assault. But the same day, he was released. He remained free for months, and no criminal charges were officially filed.
In a 2019 interview, Kenosha prosecutor Michael Graveley said that his office did not know the age of the girls in the videos, and delayed filing charges until they could determine whether they were minors.
But records obtained by The Post show that investigators described many of the girls being abused in Volar’s videos as appearing to be in their early and mid teens. One, they wrote, could have been as young as 12.
“They should have located those girls. He should have went to jail,” Kizer’s mother, Devore Taylor, said. “Had they approached the situation correctly from the get-go, he would still be alive.” And her daughter, she said, wouldn’t be facing years in prison.
Prosecutors have pointed to texts and social media messages as evidence that Kizer planned to kill Volar, including one she sent from Volar’s home on the night of the murder that said, “I’m finna do it.” They said she downloaded a police scanner app before shots were fired and posted a laughing emoji on Facebook beside the words “MY MUG SHOT.”
After being arrested in June of 2018, she told detectives that Volar was on top of her on the ground when she retrieved a gun from her purse and shot him. She lit a fire in his home and fled in his car. She was tired, she told detectives, of Volar touching her.
Charged with arson and first-degree intentional homicide, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, Kizer remained in jail for two years, until 2020, when a bond fund that had been flooded with donations after the killing of George Floyd paid $400,000 for her release.
Her case received even more attention the following year, as activists contrasted her experience in Kenosha against that of Kyle Rittenhouse, a White 17-year-old, who a jury determined was acting in self-defense when he killed two people during a protest.
Then came the state Supreme Court’s decision in Kizer’s favor, ruling that she should have the chance to show that there was a “necessary logical connection” between her exploitation and the offense.
With public support and a significant legal win, Kizer’s case seemed destined for a jury trial. But in January, Kizer called police on a boyfriend — and ended up facing a disorderly conduct charge. Though that charge was dropped, it was a violation of her release conditions. Kizer was charged with felony bail jumping and returned to jail.
‘Forgiveness’
Since being incarcerated a second time, Kizer said she has been reading Janet Evanovich books and trying to find the right words to put in a letter to Volar’s family.
“I know they look at me like I’m a bad person,” she said. “I would like their forgiveness.”
Volar’s father, Randall Volar II, declined to comment until the sentencing hearing is over. In 2019, he told The Post that his son was a “good man” who is dearly missed. “What happened is a tragedy for both families, the Kizers and the Volars,” he said.
Kizer said that while she knows she is likely to face prison time, she thought that taking the plea would guarantee her freedom, even if it is years away. In her years out of jail, she came to understand what a normal life might one day look like.
She waitressed at Red Lobster and took classes toward a high school diploma. She dressed her dog, Twilight, in a Green Bay Packers sweater and bought herself one to match. She attended counseling whenever someone she trusted would give her a ride to the sessions. She wouldn’t take the bus, she said, because she was afraid to be around strangers.
As her sentencing date approaches, she is thinking about the hours she spent playing The Sims 4, a video game that lets players build their own alternate universe. In the game, she had her own house. She was a wife, a mother and a nurse. In the game, her future was in her own hands.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/08/14/chrystul-kizer-sentence-sex-trafficking/
