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Anorak News | Amanda Kercher co-opts the Kercher family into plugging her book

Amanda Kercher co-opts the Kercher family into plugging her book

by | 30th, April 2013

Italy Knox

AMANDA Knox has been on the TV in the US. She tells ABC that she “wants to be recognised as a person”.

“I mean, it’s one thing to be called certain things in the media, it’s another to be sitting in a courtroom, fighting for your life, while people are calling you a devil. For all intents and purposes I was a murderer, whether I was or not. I had to live with the idea that that would be my life.”

She toldUSA Today, as quoted in the Times:

The ideal situation in my mind is that (the Kercher family) could show me Meredith’s grave. Because it was like, I wasn’t allowed to grieve, either, and that would mean a lot to me.”

Why do that in the media? Why put pressure on the Kerchers? Why make it about them? Because Knox is plugging her book Waiting to be Heard: A Memoir. The Kerchers make the story have a future. The publishers need to get value from the $4 million advance Knox earned for her story.

Here’s what Knox said in full:

“It’s really hard. I’ve always been afraid of just upsetting them. And I feel like as long as there’s question of my involvement in Meredith’s death, I don’t want to impose myself on them. And I really think that, at least from what I’ve read, that nothing I could say would make them feel better. …

“I mean, the ideal situation in my mind is that they could show me Meredith’s grave. Because it was like, I wasn’t allowed to grieve, either. And that, that would mean a lot to me. But you know what? It’s all about what means to them. And if that never happens, then, then that’s OK. Because ultimately it’s about them. …

“This trial (ordered by the Italian Supreme Court last month) has been a barrier to that. It’s this, this, this field of barbed wire that I’m having to crawl through so I can finally get to the side where, ‘OK, we’re finally on the same side!’ And I can’t hail at them when I’m in the middle of the barbed wire.”

She writes:

“It infuriated me that the media were rewriting our relationship to fit their storyline. I was a monster. Meredith was a saint.”

Knox is enrolled on a degree course in creative writing at the University of Washington.

In 2007, Knox stood trial in Perugia, Italy, for Kercher’s murder. In 2009, she and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were found guilty. They spent four years in prison before their names were cleared on appeal.

Then in March 2013, Italy’s Supreme Court overturned the acquittal. A retrial was ordered. But now Knox is in the US.

Rudy Guede, the black African immigrant, is the only person to have been convicted of the murder. He’s still in prison.



Posted: 30th, April 2013 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink