Amanda Knox: "I am plagued by the guilty of survival"

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Amanda Knox (in 2017): Shadows of the Past

Photo: Bruce R. Bennett / ZUMA Press / IMAGO

It has been six years since she was finally acquitted, but she cannot get rid of the public image of her: Amanda Knox settled the accounts with the tabloid media in an interview with the BBC.

She was still struggling with the "invented version" of her, said the 34-year-old.

Knox had become known through the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher.

The British woman was raped and found half-naked with her throat cut in Perugia, Italy, in November 2007.

In December 2009, an Italian court convicted Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, for the crime.

A judicial tussle that lasted for years followed until they were finally acquitted in 2015.

The court accuses the investigators of glaring mistakes.

The media reports quickly no longer revolved around the victim, but around "a fictional sex villain," according to Knox.

"It became a moral story about female sexuality," she said.

"Meredith was portrayed as a virgin Madonna and I as a sexually obsessed, lustful, uninhibited whore." It was no longer a matter of finding the truth.

“I think there was an incredible invasion of my privacy.

But also an appropriation of my identity, which often had nothing to do with me, «says Knox.

When asked by moderator Emma Barnett if she believed her case would be handled differently today - after the #MeToo movement - Knox said she hoped "people are more skeptical about the portrayal of events today."

But even in her case, the social media were very active and had an influence on the course.

Even then, people vehemently advocated one side or the other, and this "partisanship" has become even more pronounced today.

Knox describes this as a "big problem" because it creates bias: "You see what you want to see."

When asked about the murder of Kercher, Knox is emotional in the interview: "I always put myself in Meredith's position," she said.

"I am plagued by the guilty of survival".

She wondered what would have happened if she had been home: "Maybe we could have fought it off together, or we'd both be dead."

Knox - who now has a baby herself - put herself in the shoes of Kercher's mother for the first time this year: "It's not fair and nothing will ever bring Meredith back." She wishes that the world would be "a better one for her own daughter." Place is when it was for me and when it was for Meredith. "

In the Kercher case, only Rudy Guede has been sentenced to 16 years imprisonment as an accomplice.

He himself has denied the act several times.

In 2020, the man was released prematurely and subject to conditions.

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