Amanda Knox was arrested over the the killing of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, and claims that she was groped in jail by guards and had to strip for a male doctor
Amanada Knox claims she was asked for sex, made to strip and groped after being detained over the killing of British student Meredith Kercher.
The 37-year-old American reportedly says she was sexually assaulted by prison guards and then made to strip naked for a search by a male doctor after being arrested in Perugia, Italy, over her 21-year-old flatmate’s murder in 2007.
Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend were convicted and acquitted in flip-flop verdicts in Ms Kercher’s brutal murder, before being exonerated by the highest Cassation Court in 2015.
The American has been in and out of the news since and in January, Italy’s highest court confirmed a slander conviction against Knox for accusing an innocent man of murdering her British flatmate 17 years ago.
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And Knox is now due to release a new memoir Free this Tuesday where she tells of the way she was treated following her arrest in Perugia inside a jail.
She reportedly alleges on one occasion she grabbed by the waist in a bathroom by a guard who attempted to kiss her while offensive comments were made about her. “He interrogated me about my underwear, my sex life, and propositioned me for sex,” reported The Sun.
Following her arrest she said she was made to strip naked during a medical examination. “A male doctor minutely examined my neck, my hands, my genitals and pointed out details for a photographer, reassuring me that they were only looking for signs of sexual violence,” she is understood to have said in the book.
Since her release from jail she claims that she has received all kinds of love letters, marriage proposals and death threats.
Knox did not risk any more time in jail after her slander conviction in January. She had already served nearly four years during the investigation, initial murder trial and first appeal. But Knox had continued the legal battle with the aim of clearing her name of all criminal wrongdoing.
Knox returned to the United States in 2011, after being freed by an appeals court in Perugia, and has established herself as a global campaigner for the wrongly convicted. She has a podcast with her husband and has the new memoir coming out titled, “Free: My Search for Meaning.”
Knox was a 20-year-old student in Perugia when Ms Kercher was found stabbed to death on November 2, 2007, in her bedroom in the apartment they shared with two Italian women.
The case made global headlines as suspicion quickly fell on Knox and her boyfriend of just days, Raffaele Sollecito. But another man, Rudy Hermann Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was eventually convicted of murder after his DNA was found at the crime scene. He was freed in 2021, after serving most of his 16-year sentence.
The European court ordered Italy to pay Knox damages for the police failures, noting she was particularly vulnerable as a foreign student not fluent in Italian.