Amanda Knox, a victim of wrongful murder in Italy has spoken out about the fears she had regarding her motherhood. She said she imagined all the things she would do to herself while in prison.
She had spent nearly two years behind bars when Meredith Kercher, her British roommate was murdered in 2007. She was released in 2011, after nearly four years of imprisonment, and she returned to the United States.
Knox welcomed her first child — a daughter Eureka Muse Knox-Robinson — with her husband Christopher Robinson earlier this year after suffering a devastating miscarriage.
She wrote a piece for Oprah Daily about how her hopes of becoming a mother came to an abrupt halt when she was sentencingd to serve her sentence behind bars.
‘My first infertility crisis occurred when I was sentenced to 26 years in prison for a murder I didn’t commit,’ she wrote in the piece, titled ‘Sentenced to Infertility,’ admitting she had ‘naively assumed that the truth couldn’t help but win out.’
Fear: Amanda Knox (pictured in a new Oprah Daily essay) describes how her dream of becoming a mother was shattered after being wrongfully convicted.
It was lost time. Knox (pictured 2008) already had two years of imprisonment in Italy for Meredith Kercher’s murder in 2007.
She said, “That guilty verdict rocked the foundations in my world”, and she also recalls, “I realized that the truth can be overcome by a false, but compelling story. And while I continued fighting for my innocence and appealed my conviction, I lost all faith in the fact that my innocence would guarantee my freedom.” It was a sad and new reality that I had to face. I planned for 26 years of imprisonment.
Knox said that Knox always envisioned herself as a mother.
“Now, I was faced with the possibility of being freed back into society at 46.” It wasn’t just my freedom that had been stolen from me; motherhood had been stolen from me,’ she shared.
“I was thinking of my mom. She is a teacher who wished for me to grow up being kind. All her love was for me. She was my inspiration and I wanted to emulate her. But where could I find my love again? My love would be directed not into my daughter, but into my empty future.
Tragedy: Kercher was stabbed and sexually assaulted while studying in Perugia (Italy) in November 2007. This incident attracted attention from international media.
‘I didn’t cry. She admitted that she did not cry but had pictured all of the possible ways she might die in prison.
Kercher was raped and brutally stabbed in the neck to death while studying in Perugia in Italy in November 2007. This incident attracted attention from international media.
Knox and her then Raffaele Sollecito — who had also been wrongly convicted of the murder in 2009 — were acquitted in 2011 after an appeals court found that legal procedures had not been followed and there was no DNA tying either of them to the scene.
Rudy Guede from the area was sentenced in separate trials after Kercher’s DNA and her room were found. In 2008, Guede was sentenced for 16 years. But he was released on December 2020. The remainder of the sentence will be spent doing community work.
Knox was convicted and tried in absentia again. The conviction was overturned by the highest Italian court in 2015.
‘Bewildered, I emerged into the free world thinking naively that I was the only person who’d ever been through something so traumatizing and bizarre,’ she recalled.
According to her, her mother brought her to the Innocence Network Conference to make her feel less isolated. It was there that she encountered hundreds of others wrongfully convicted, which she said were mostly Black and brown men.
Also, she made connections with women “who are few and far apart”, stating that they had similar infertility problems while being held in prison.
Knox was wrongfully convicted in 2009.
Knox, pictured in 2011, during Knox’s appeal trial. She admitted she was terrified of the idea of her children being imprisoned.
One of the women Knox bonded with, Stephanie Louden, was 21 years old when she was convicted of manslaughter in the 1985 death of her college roommate Stacie Pannell.
Loudon was in her thirties and experiencing perimenopause. It was said that Loudon wouldn’t have the ability to bear a child.
Knox stated that “This is something that’s often not recognized when women are in prison.” ‘Both men and women can lose their most productive years when sentenced to overly long and punitive sentences, but men’s reproductive functions do not expire the way women’s do.
‘When a women is convicted of a crime and sentenced for a prolonged period, she is in effect sentenced not to time but to infertility.
Louden was able to get pregnant with her son despite all odds. Knox called him a miracle child but pointed out that not everybody is so lucky.
An anonymous friend was cited by the activist as having spent over 15 years in jail before being exonerated. After trying ‘the gamut’ of failed fertility treatments she finally gave up and decided to give up trying for a baby.
Troubles: Knox, (pictured at Modena’s Criminal Justice Festival, Italy in 2019, was later tried absentia and convicted once more, which ultimately led to the overturn of the conviction.
Reminder: ‘When a woman is convicted and given a long sentence, she is effectively sentenced not just to time, but to infertility,’ Knox wrote in her essay
Knox, who was pregnant with Robinson’s first child, revealed her painful miscarriage in the first trimester of the Pandemic on her podcast Labyrinths.
The loss caused her to question if’something’ had occurred in Italy to trigger fertility problems.
Oprah Daily’s essayist, She recalls how she was “glowing” at her eight-week appointment for an ultrasound. However, when she arrived, she realized that she had no heartbeat.
“I had a miscarriage for two days. I was shaking, with my teeth chattering and feeling pain. Each clump of urine in the bathroom was a repeat question. Did that make you my baby??’ She wrote.
She continued, “It was much more emotional and physically painful than what I had expected, partly because I wasn’t completely prepared.” ‘From what I’d gathered from high school sex ed and popular culture, pregnancy was a given, and miscarriage ― well, no one talked about it.
“In the aftermath we tried again and continued to have negative results for months. “I began to fear that there was something more.
News: Knox and her husband Christopher Robinson announced she was pregnant in August, just weeks after she opened up about the miscarriage she suffered during the pandemic
Surprise: In October, she told The New York Times that she had given birth to their daughter, Eureka, ‘several months ago’ and kept the baby’s birth a secret
Knox’s experience inspired her to create a miniseries about infertility on her podcast in which anonymous women shared their struggles.
‘It brought home to me how lucky I am that I was imprisoned for only four years, that I was able to find love, and start trying, and I’m thrilled to say that I’m no longer staring down negative tests and am now enjoying motherhood,’ she said.
Knox encouraged his readers to fight infertility through prison sentencing, by supporting organizations like the Sentencing Project which combats mass incarceration
‘We can recognize the stakes for getting it right when women are accused of crimes, and we can take their fertility into account during sentencing,’ she wrote at the end of her essay. ‘A 20-year sentence for a woman isn’t just time — it’s a life that could be, a child waiting for the chance to be born.’
Knox revealed she was pregnant on August 2, just weeks after her openness about the miscarriage. She had likely already given birth at that point — or was just about to.
In October, she told the The New York Times that she and Robinson had welcomed their daughter ‘several months ago.’ She recorded her pregnancy and the podcast episodes were delayed to make the birth secret.
The Times published her interview that day. This is the last episode of her podcast, where she discusses giving birth.
Secret: Knox documented her pregnancy on her podcast, Labyrinths, and on social media as if it were in real time. The Times later revealed that posts were not shared immediately.
Candid: ‘I’m thrilled to say that I’m no longer staring down negative tests and am now enjoying motherhood,’ Knox wrote in her new essay
Knox spoke out from Vashon island, Washington to tell the paper that she is still anxious about her paparazzi bounty.
“I’ll say that I am excited not to have to pretend not to be mom. It’s just like my brain is always there.
Knox stated to The Times that her struggle has not ended with liking fame but needing money to survive.
She wrote Waiting to be Heard in 2013, a memoir for which an advance of $3.8million was granted.
Curt, Curt’s father, said that only $200,000 was left after she had paid her legal expenses. Her PR team agreed. Her grandparents took out three mortgages to finance the war; her older sister Deanna borrowed money from her bank.
Knox and Robinson, who she wed in a time travel themed wedding in 2020, are still able to sustain their income from the podcast. However, they plan on pitching a film adaptation her memoir and a TV series about wrong convictions.
According to the newspaper, they also plan on drafting a set of NFTs from famous tabloid covers that feature Knox’s image.
Knox stated, “What I’m telling Chris is that it’s my goal to be able to live the best life possible so we can afford the mortgage.”
“I tell myself that if everything fails, I can still make cuckoo clocks to earn a living.”
Gracious: She said that even though she was in jail for only four years, she felt grateful she could still find love and begin a family.
Do it: The New York Times profile was published. After that, the mom announced on Instagram that her future images of her daughter would not be shared on social media.
Robinson, who is also a novelist, poet, and an author, has been working on two sci-fi books and one nonfiction book.
Knox completed her University of Washington creative writing degree and took a few low-paying jobs in the decade that followed her release.
Her first job was in a used book store. She then wrote under her pseudonym for the local paper.
She stated that it was hard to find a regular, forward-looking job because not everyone would know me.
Knox became an advocate for those wrongfully convicted.
New mom A photo she took from her New York Times Instagram profile was posted. She said it was the first image that her daughter would share online.
“Since my exoneration I’ve tried to reclaim myself and protect those I love from being exploited for tabloid content,” she said.
“It is not an easy task, and it often feels like I’m making bad choices from good whole cloth. Although I realize that I can not protect my child from the same kind of treatment as I have received, I try to do the best I possibly can.
“Which is the reason why I won’t ever post a picture of her on social media. Thank you to all who wished me and @emceecarbon well as we journey towards parenthood.
“Thanks for believing in me.”