‘I can do things to you that no man can’
AMANDA KNOX REVEALS INMATE’S PRISON SEDUCTION TRY:
A LESBIAN INMATE at an Italian jail tried to seduce exonerated murder suspect Amanda Knox, according to an essay by the acquitted American.
Knox says that the small-time drug dealer attempted to forge a sexual relationship with her while she was locked up for the 2007 murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, telling her, “I can do things to you that no man can.”
The pair became friendly while at the Capanne prison in Umbria, Knox said, but “Leny” wanted something more.
“I was cautiously friendly. We would walk the perimeter together. She told me she was a lesbian and I told her I was straight,” Knox wrote in the essay for a Valentine’s Day-themed “Love is a Hoax” series for Broadly’s, a website devoted to women’s issues.
“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,” Knox wrote. “This is common. Contrary to what you might guess, many prison relationships aren’t about sex — just like most relationships outside of prison.”
But the 29-year-old Seattle woman equated Leny’s advances and attempts to seduce her to her loss of control while imprisoned.
Sexual assault by guards and strip searches already made her feel that the prison had taken “ownership of my body.”
“‘I’ve changed women before,’ she’d tell me. ‘I can do things to you that no man can,’ ” Knox wrote. “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,” she added. “One day, Leny kissed me.”
Knox broke off contact with her imprisoned would-be paramour.
She revealed the scuttled relationship as part of a reflection on how many women prisoners, many of whom would consider themselves heterosexual, often maintain sexual relationships with fellow inmates.
“The idea of women in prison brings out the horny teenage boy in many of us — perhaps it’s the implied lesbianism — but there’s also something deeper,” Knox wrote.
Many of the women were seeking comfort in an unforgiving environment, she wrote.
Leny, who served only a short stint behind bars, tried to rekindle the pair’s romance from the outside, according to Knox.
“She sent me jazz CDs which she inscribed on the inside jacket, ‘Love always, Leny,’ ” Knox wrote. “I never replied.”
The essay provides a rare glimpse into Knox’s time in an Italian cell. She says she was reserved around other inmates and felt she had to constantly be on guard.
She survived panic attacks, bouts of depression, and thoughts of suicide by helping other inmates write letters and by translating for foreigners who didn’t speak Italian.
Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were originally sentenced to 26 years behind bars. Each served four years before being acquitted of Kercher’s killing in Perugia. After returning to the U.S., a higher Italian court reversed Knox’s acquittal in 2013, sentencing her again to prison. She was cleared for a second time in 2015.