Amanda Knox says a lesbian inmate tried to seduce her in prison
Amanda Knox has opened up about how a fellow prison inmate tried to seduce her.
Writing for Broadly, Knox says she had a complicated relationship with fellow inmate Leny during her stay in an Italian prison.
She was famously jailed between 2007 and 2011 after being convicted of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher while studying in Perugia.
Knox was eventually exonerated in 2015 by the highest court in Italy.
Now 29, Knox says she was “cautiously friendly” win inmate Leny.
She adds: “She told me she was a lesbian and I told her I was straight. Leny told me about how, in Italy, she had experienced a lot of judgement and closed-mindedness. I sympathised. When I was 14, a rumour went around my Catholic high school that I was a lesbian, alienating me from everyone but a small group of my classmates. Later, I became an LGBTQ ally and helped found the Gay-Straight Alliance at my high school. When I told her that, Leny grinned ear-to-ear. Afterwards, she scampered, puppy-like, alongside me as I paced the exercise yard — the next day, and the day after that, and eventually every day.”
Describing her relationship with Leny as “almost friends”, Knox says she would share items like CDs with Leny and that they would play chess together.
“At least initially, Leny might not have been trying to seduce me, and was actually just in need of someone kind to distract her from her loneliness. This is common,” Knox writes.
“Contrary to what you might guess, many prison relationships aren’t about sex — just like most relationships outside of prison.”
Going on she talks about how intimacy is forbidden in prison which could have led to solitary confinement or transfer to another facility.
“Leny wanted to hold hands,” Knox continues, “‘I’ve changed women before,’ she’d tell me. ‘I can do things to you that no man can.’ I felt objectified and I’d get annoyed. ‘You can’t change me,’ I’d respond. She’d think I was playing hard to get.”
Going on she says Leny tried to kiss her but that “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. As a prisoner, Leny should have understood that, but unlike me, Leny was serving a short stint, and didn’t feel as acutely as I did the loss of privacy, dignity, and autonomy.”
She says they parted ways and were no longer friends, but that Leny continued to send her Jazz CDs, and she never replied.
Check out the full column on Broadly, here.
