'Prison is an isolating place': Amanda Knox reveals lesbian temptations in Italian jail
Acquitted American Amanda Knox has broken her silence on her experience in an Italian prison, revealing the isolation of incarceration almost led to a lesbian relationship.
Ms Knox's murder trial captivated much of the world throughout its near-decade duration when the 20 year old was convicted and acquitted of murdering British exchange student Merredith Kercher while studying in Italy in 2007.
After a series of appeals Knox was freed in 2011 and finally acquitted in 2015, and while her story has been over-analysed in years gone by, what happened behind bars at the Capanne prison in Umbria remained untold until now.
In a blog detailing the ins and outs of prison romances, Knox wrote “I didn't really have friends in prison. Singled out as ‘the famous one’ by both inmates and officers, I spent my first eight months in isolation.”
“Most of my fellow inmates were bigger, tougher, meaner, more desperate, and had less to lose than me, so I never let my guard down," Ms Knox wrote.
But she drew comfort from a friendship with an inmate named Leny.
“Prison is an isolating place. You're forcibly removed from your homes and support network… But relationships help keep us sane, even if they’re forbidden or not ideal.
“I was caught between defensiveness and loneliness. Leny didn’t demand that I give her the “real scoop” about my case, or the clothes off my back, or ask me to buy her cigarettes. At first, she didn’t demand anything.”
As lawyers desperately worked on an appeal for the imprisoned Knox, the young American was caught off guard when her prison friend demanded more.
“It was bad enough that the prison institution took ownership of my body, that I was caged and strip-searched on a regular basis and had already been sexually harassed by male guards," she wrote.
“Leny wanted to hold hands. ‘I’ve changed women before,’ she’d tell me. ‘I can do things to you that no man can’.
“She’d think I was playing hard to get. One day, Leny kissed me.
Despite admitting that she craved human affection, the freedom-seeking Ms Knox rebuffed Leny's advances.
“Since she couldn’t respect my boundaries, we couldn’t be friends anymore,” she wrote.
“'Gay for the stay' is an insensitive oversimplification that signals a lack of understanding about what it’s really like to be imprisoned, and an underestimation of human nature.”
Finally free, Knox is now back in her native America and engaged to a former middle school friend.
