Amanda Knox poses in a photograph she posted on social media.
Amanda Knox claims that the continuing criminal trials against Ghislaine Maxill and Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos founders are giving her flashbacks to her own trial. However, she doesn’t buy the defense of the other women that the alleged crimes were the fault of men.
Knox wrote for Bari Weiss’s Substack channel Common Sense that, while anyone can sympathize with Maxwell or Holmes, she’s not convinced that Jeffrey Epstein and Sunny Balwani coerced them into believing that Holmes was Sunny Balwani’s Theranos founder and ex-boyfriend.
Maxwell is currently being prosecuted for sexual trafficking. Her accusers say she helped Epstein, who died in 2019, abuse girls by recruiting them, grooming them and sometimes sexually abusing them herself. These claims she denies.
Holmes is being tried in California on charges of fraud. Holmes is being accused of knowing that she defrauded investors, doctors, and patients when she sold them Theranos technology blood test results while knowing they weren’t working. Balwani was Balwani’s much older boyfriend. She claims she coerced her.
Knox wrote Monday for Weiss’s Common Sense that neither of the women has shown enough remorse to their victims for their defenses not to fail.
‘I know very well what it’s like to be scapegoated for a man’s crimes and to be a victim of true coercion. If there is anyone who can empathize—and sympathize—with these two women, it’s me.
In a court sketch, Ghislaine Maxill is seen. Cameras are prohibited in her New York City sextrafficking trial.
Maxwell asserts that she has been made to feel like a victim by Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a late pedophile financial who Maxwell worked for for many years. Epstein killed himself in 2019. Knox says that Maxwell’s fate would not be so dire if Epstein had been alive. However, Epstein is being held responsible for her crimes and there is plenty of evidence to support that claim.
‘But even for me, it’s not easy…I can’t help but balk at their defense strategies, which seem like a refusal to be held accountable.
‘While it’s true that even powerful women can yet remain subservient to powerful men, we shouldn’t forget that the most vulnerable people in these equations are not Maxwell and Holmes, but the victims they are trying to brush aside or discredit,’ she writes.
Maxwell claimed she was Epstein’s victim, and Knox said the evidence against her was “pretty damning”.
‘If Epstein were still alive—if the chief culprit were still around for us to hate—there’s no doubt Maxwell’d be subject to much less vitriol. But she’s been charged with her own crimes, not Epstein’s, and the evidence against her is pretty damning.
‘The alleged victims claim that she didn’t just go along with Epstein’s innumerable deceptions, but that she was an active participant in finding and grooming his victims,’ she writes.
Balwani may have coerced Holmes, but it is still to be determined if the jury will believe Holmes.
“Holmes painted herself as suffering from Stockholm syndrome. She’s asking us to believe that, very gradually, over many years, Balwani brought her under his spell. That’s possible. Even though Holmes was, until recently, a celebrated, feminist icon, it is conceivable that Balwani did bring her under his spell.
“But in this case, he-said she-said it. The question is: Will they believe her?”
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is shown in court in California. She was charged with fraud. It is seen that she holds hands with her mother as well as her husband.
Holmes claims she was forced to confess that Sunny Balwani, Sunny’s older boyfriend and co-founder of Theranos, coerced her.
‘The nature of the two women’s crimes are different, but the accusations that have been lodged against them—and the defense they’ve mustered in response to those accusations—are similar. Both women are charged with deception, manipulation and exploitation. According to Lady Macbeth, both are accused of deception and manipulation.
Knox was found guilty of the murder in 2007 of Meredith Kercher, an English student. She was then convicted once again after the conviction was reversed. The conviction was overturned by Italy’s highest court in 2014.
She writes that both men insist on being the true criminals.
Knox said that regardless of what happens in the trial, they show how women often are blamed for crimes committed by men. She was one of those victims.
‘There’s nothing quite like the high of hating and punishing women accused of terrible crimes. It is a reason we should be cautious when we wish to burn them, she says.
Knox was exonerated and convicted of the murder of Meredith Kercher (a British exchange student) while they were both studying in Perugia in Italy in 2007.
Rudy Guede is the true killer. She had broken into Kercher’s house and raped her before brutally murdering her.
Knox, now living in Seattle was the victim of the crime. He is also known worldwide as “Foxy Knoxy”.
Italian police claimed that Meredith was murdered by her boyfriend in Italy and she orchestrated it.
Rudy Guede received a death sentence. While he was released last month from jail, he insists that Knox played a role in his murder.
In 2011, her conviction was overturned and she went back to the USA.
The second time she was found guilty in absentia in 2013, the conviction was reversed by Italy’s top court.
Knox was recently blessed with a child. She said it allowed her to rededicate her identity.
Guede is now out of prison for his murder conviction.
Knox begged him to remove his name from Twitter last month. He is still refusing.
Upon his release in November, Guede told The Sun: ‘The court convicted me of being an accessory to murder purely because my DNA was there but the (legal) documents say others were there and that I did not inflict the fatal wounds.
When asked if he meant to mention Knox or Sollecito he replied: “I don’t think she needs to read these documents.
“As they said, others were there. I didn’t inflict any stab wounds.
“I know the truth, and she knows it.”
Christopher Robinson, Knox’s husband responded by saying: “The lies of Rudy Guede which without any doubt killed Meredith Kercher. “This is cruel for Amanda and the Kercher families.