Amanda Knox describes struggle with public’s ‘made up version of herself’
Amanda Knox describes her struggle with the public’s ‘made up version of herself’ – almost fourteen years to the day since her flatmate Meredith Kercher, 21, was brutally raped and killed in the apartment they shared
Amanda Knox hit headlines when roommate Meredith Kercher was found deadShe was discovered in room in house they shared in Italy on November 2, 2007Knox was convicted of her murder in 2009 but was released from jail in 2011She told Woman’s Hour she had to face the world’s ‘made-up version of myself’Now a mother, Knox said the case was ‘an incredible violation of my privacy’ and is ‘an ongoing struggle’
<!–
<!–
<!–<!–
<!–
(function (src, d, tag){
var s = d.createElement(tag), prev = d.getElementsByTagName(tag)[0];
s.src = src;
prev.parentNode.insertBefore(s, prev);
}(“https://www.dailymail.co.uk/static/gunther/1.17.0/async_bundle–.js”, document, “script”));
<!–
DM.loadCSS(“https://www.dailymail.co.uk/static/gunther/gunther-2159/video_bundle–.css”);
<!–
Amanda Knox has said she faces an ‘ongoing struggle’ to live with the public’s ‘made up version of herself’ – a decade after she was released from jail over her British flatmate’s murder.
It is almost 14 years to the day that 21-year-old student Meredith Kercher was raped and killed in a brutal attack in the apartment they shared in the Italian city of Perugia.
As details of the case built up, attention quickly turned to Knox, then a 20-year-old US student, and what has been described as an attempt to build a narrative around her of as a ‘sexually voracious femme fatale’ and her then-boyfriend as prime suspects.
It was even claimed Meredith had died in a ‘drug-fuelled sex game’ gone wrong, which led to Amanda’s nickname of Foxy Knoxy.
She was found guilty along with boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and serving four years in prison, but was released in 2011 to return to the US.
Speaking to Woman’s Hour, she said the media scrum following the conviction and later release made her lose control of her identity.
Amanda Knox has said she faces an ‘ongoing struggle’ to live with the public’s ‘made up version of herself’ – a decade after she was released from jail over her British flatmate’s murder
‘I think that there was an incredible violation of my privacy. But also a capitalisation upon my identity that often had nothing to do with me,’ she told BBC presenter Emma Barnett.
‘People vehemently stood for one side or the other and were unable… again there was the sense of confirmation bias you see what you want to see.’
A decade has now passed since her release but interest in the murder case was renewed when she was again found guilty on new evidence before finally getting a full exoneration by the Italian Supreme Court on appeal in 2015.
Speaking of how the case would have been viewed today, she said: ‘It’s interesting. I think that it would be… I would hope that people would have been more sceptical about that portrayal of events today.
It is almost 14 years to the day that 21-year-old student Meredith Kercher was raped and killed in a brutal attack in the apartment they shared in the Italian city of Perugia
Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 36, were convicted of Kercher’s murder in 2009 before being acquitted, convicted again and then finally definitely cleared in 2015. Pictured: The former couple in 2007, shortly after Kercher’s body was found
‘That said, I think that social media was already quite active at the time of my case and had a huge impact in how the case played out.
‘And if anything it has become even more about tribalism, which is also a big problem where people vehemently stood for one side or the other and were unable… again there was the sense of confirmation bias you see what you want to see.’
‘So I very much felt like as I was coming into the world I was in conversation constantly with a made-up version of myself that was in people’s minds before they ever encountered me as a real person.
‘And that’s an ongoing problem for me.
‘It’s an ongoing struggle for me that has… it’s not over.’
Knox spent four years in prison in Perugia for the murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, who was found dead in the house they shared in November 2007.
She was convicted in December 2009 and sentenced to 28 and a half years, but was acquitted in 2011 after an appeals court found that legal procedures had not been followed and there was no DNA tying her and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito to the scene.
Speaking of how the case would have been viewed today, she said: ‘ It’s interesting. I think that it would be… I would hope that people would have been more sceptical about that portrayal of events today’
A local man, Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial after his DNA was found on Kercher’s body and in the room where she died. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2008, but was released in December 2020 and will spend the rest of his sentence doing community work.
Knox was tried again in absentia, convicted again, and then ultimately had the conviction overturned by Italy’s highest court in 2015.
She now lives in Seattle with her poet and novelist husband Christopher Robinson, 39.
Knox recently revealed that she had given birth to a baby girl – but lied to listeners to her podcast by saying that she was still pregnant in a bid to avoid a media storm.
Amanda Knox now lives in Seattle with her poet and novelist husband Christopher Robinson, 39
The couple welcomed daughter Eureka Muse Knox-Robinson ‘several months ago’, she told The New York Times.
Yet Knox only announced that she was pregnant on August 4, in the first episode of her podcast, Labyrinths. By that point, she had likely already given birth – or was just about to.
Last month, Knox explained that she and Robinson, who married in 2020 in a time travel-themed wedding, wanted to keep their daughter’s arrival a secret and so documented her pregnancy in their podcast, Labyrinths, but kept the birth secret.
‘I’m still nervous about the paparazzi bounty on her head,’ said Knox, speaking to the paper from their home on Vashon Island near Seattle, in Washington State.
