Amanda Knox

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I’ve been on trial half my life. Yesterday, my 18-year legal drama finally came to an end when the Court of Cassation, Italy’s highest court, definitively convicted me of criminal slander. Many people are familiar with my wrongful conviction for Meredith Kercher’s murder, but this lesser charge, arising from statements I signed during my interrogation, is the one that has continued to haunt me.

Does my name belong to me? Does my face? What about my life? My story? Why is my name used to refer to events I had no hand in? I return to these questions again and again because others continue to profit off my identity, and my trauma, without my consent. Most recently, there is the film Stillwater, directed by Tom McCarthy and starring Matt Damon and Abigail Breslin, which was, in McCarthy’s words, “directly inspired by the Amanda Knox saga.