- Amanda Knox returned to Italy to speak about wrongful convictions for the first time since being acquitted of murdering her roommate.
- Knox, then 20 years old, was twice accused and convicted of murdering her British roommate in November 2007.
- “I’m about to return to Italy for the first time since I was released from prison and fled the country in a high-speed chase, paparazzi literally ramming the back of my stepdad’s rental car,” Knox wrote in a Medium post.
American Amanda Knox returned to Italy Thursday to speak about wrongful convictions for the first time since being acquitted of murdering her roommate in 2007 while studying abroad.
Knox is set to participate in a three-day convention that is centered around wrongful convictions and how the media plays a role in criminal trials. The Italy Innocence Project invited Knox to speak, and she will debate on how the media is involved in trials such as hers on the last day of the conference, ABC News reported.
The Italy Innocence Project is a nonprofit company that was founded in 2013. It studies some of the issues behind wrongful convictions.
“I’m about to return to Italy for the first time since I was released from prison and fled the country in a high-speed chase, paparazzi literally ramming the back of my stepdad’s rental car,” Knox wrote in a Medium post Wednesday. (RELATED: Europe Orders Italy To Pay Amanda Knox $20k In Damages)
I’ve chosen not to do interviews in the lead up to Italy, in the hopes that what I will say in Modena will speak for itself.
That said, @manunderbridge & I did write this piece for @Medium about what happens when your life becomes someone else’s content.https://t.co/EBBRVr0gOz— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) June 12, 2019
Knox, then 20 years old, was twice accused and convicted of murdering her British roommate Meredith Kercher in November 2007 while the two were studying overseas in Italy. Her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted of murder. They were both acquitted in 2015. Knox left Italy as soon as she was released, ABC News reported.
Media outlets around the world reported on Knox’s trial, and Knox has made comments since her release about how they portrayed her and the case to the public.
“Thrust into the spotlight against my will in 2007, the year of the iPhone and the takeoff of Twitter and Facebook, the most intimate details of my life — from my sexual history to my thoughts of death and suicide in prison — were taken from my private diary and leaked to the media,” Knox wrote in her post.
She also wrote that while she was on trial, the “prosecutor painted me as a sex-crazed femme fatale” and that “the media profited for years by sensationalizing an already sensational and utterly unjustified story.”
“[Knox] is the icon of trials that the media carry out before the trial in court is conducted,” Guido Sola, one of the organizers for the event, said to CNN. “Amanda has been definitively acquitted in court, but in the popular imagination she is still guilty, because she has been the victim of a barbaric media trial.”
Netflix made a documentary about the case in 2016, titled “Amanda Knox,” that featured interviews with Knox and aimed to portray a more personal view of the case. Knox agreed to participate, but described disappointment at how Netflix chose to advertise.
“And then, of course, Netflix chose to advertise ‘Amanda Knox’ with twin massive billboards in L.A. and New York: my face and the words ‘monster’ on one and ‘victim’ on the other,” Knox wrote in her Medium post. “They were playing the ‘did she or didn’t she game’ that I was already so, so tired of.”
“And as this homecoming looms (or is it a ‘deployment’ or ‘madness’ — no word seems to fit), a different sort of surreal moment is at the forefront of my mind,” Knox wrote Wednesday about her return to Italy.
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