Thread by @amandaknox

The reputational damage I still bear from my wrongful conviction is incalculable, but here's a taste. I make a joke about that time I was horrifically locked in a prison cell for 4 years for a murder I had nothing to do with, and I get these responses.

All these people think I'm either a killer or that I am not allowed to laugh at my own trauma. Why? Because of a decade+ of slanderous media coverage. Because of confirmation bias. Because of misogyny.

These are people lacking in compassion and imagination. They refuse to imagine what it would be like to be in my shoes: for my roommate to be murdered by Rudy Guede, a man whose name they likely don't even know,

to blamed for his crimes and vilified on a global scale for the rest of my life, despite my definitive acquittal, despite how my wrongful conviction is a practical textbook example of how justice goes awry:

Incentivized informants, flawed forensics, prosecutorial tunnel vision, false confessions. What happened to me is really not that different from what happened to the Central Park Five, or the West Memphis Three.

And anyone who works with the @innocence project or in criminal justice reform knows this. And yet, I continue to be vilified. I continue to be shamed for existing, for having the audacity to process my own trauma with humor at times.

In spite of this injustice I still suffer every single day of my life, I hold my head high. I know my exoneree brothers and sisters have my back. I know criminal justice advocates understand.

I know there are plenty of you out there who follow the nuanced and compassionate work I do in my journalism and on my podcast, Labyrinths. Thank you for balancing out this hate. Thank you for standing up for me, for reason, and for justice.

I still often feel that the deck is stacked against me. That there are millions who bought into the lies from the prosecution and the tabloids, that I have no hope of truly recovering my reputation.

I honestly don't know what to do about that other than be the person I am and enact the values that matter to me: honesty, compassion, the pursuit of truth even when uncomfortable, a willingness to laugh even while facing serious issues.

People have often asked me why I never changed my name. You know why? Because I have perfectly good name, & I've never done anything to tarnish that name. So I bear it proudly, even if it still conjures in the minds of millions of people: killer, slut, liar.

I know who I am, and I'm proud of who I am. But changing my reputation still matters. My work is my livelihood, and many write me off still as a villain, or a waste of space. You can help me change that.

So I humbly ask: If you're a fan of my work, please, tell people! Help me turn this wreck of a reputation around.

In the meantime, thank you for allowing me to be a person - with hopes and flaws and, yes, a sense of humor.