Chrystul Kizer was 16 when she met Randy Volar and 17 when she killed him

On Monday, a Wisconsin judge is set to decide what punishment is deserved by a child sex trafficking victim who killed her abuser, ending six years of legal limbo for Chrystul Kizer and the family of the man she shot.

Kizer, now 24, was facing a possible life sentence for shooting 34-year-old Randall Volar III when she was 17, before she agreed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree reckless homicide with use of a dangerous weapon.

Volar, who was White, had been filming his sexual abuse of Kizer, who is Black, for more than a year.

Prosecutors in Kenosha, Wis., who declined to comment about the case, have long argued that Kizer premeditated the murder to steal Volar’s BMW.

Kizer has maintained that she acted in self-defense after being pinned down by Volar, but she is still 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.

Months before his death, 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 with two bullet wounds in his head.

When Chrystul was 16, she met a 33-year-old man known as Randy Volar, who repeatedly sexually abused her over the course of a year. He filmed it.

She wasn’t the only one — and in February 2018, police arrested Volar on charges including child sexual assault. But then, they released him without bail.

Volar, a white man, remained free for three months, even after police discovered evidence that he was abusing about a dozen underage black girls.

He remained free until Chrystul, then 17, went to his Kenosha home, one night in June 2018 and allegedly shot him in the head, twice. She lit his body on fire, police said, and fled in his car.

Just after 5 a.m. on the morning of June 5, 2018, a woman looked out the window of her Kenosha home and spotted flames on the roof of the tiny tan ranch house on the corner. She punched 911 into her phone.

“Fire!” she told the dispatcher. “House is burning!”

“Do you know if anyone is in the house?” the dispatcher asked.

A few days later, she confessed. District Attorney Michael Graveley, whose office knew about the evidence against Volar but waited to prosecute him, charged Chrystul with arson and first-degree intentional homicide, an offense that carries a mandatory life sentence in Wisconsin.

Graveley says he believes Chrystul’s crime was premeditated. The evidence, he argues, shows she planned to murder Volar so she could steal his BMW.

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.