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 I didn't get my old life back. No one does. Condemnation doesn't stop once you're found innocent. 
 
 Amanda Knox on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Jan. 31, 2014. (Photo: Mark Lennihan, AP) 
 
 Every day for the past nine years I've been called a slut and murderer by total strangers. In prison, it was hate mail. Outside of prison, it’s social media and hate mail. “Teach me how to get away with murder.” “I hope you will be alone forever.” “Murderess.” “Psychopath.” “Whore.” One person promised, in a comment on my personal website, to kidnap me in broad daylight, rip out my teeth and fingernails, electrocute me, and carve Meredith Kercher’s name into my body. 
 
 Meredith was a kind and outgoing British student who was murdered by Rudy Guede. She was my roommate, and I was accused of her murder by a prosecutor whose insane theories and disregard for evidence landed me in prison for four years. Italy's highest court ultimately exonerated me, finding “stunning flaws” in the investigation and “an absolute lack of biological traces” connecting me to the crime. 
 
 While the TV version of my life would end there, I have learned that condemnation doesn’t stop once you’re found innocent. From the moment I walked out of prison, my family and I have focused on healing and rebuilding our lives. But the beast of media sensationalism wasn’t satisfied. Tabloids snapped pictures of my every move, speculated on everything I did, and spun everything I said out of context. I was accused of buying my supporters, the media, and my freedom. I was shamed for having friends, opinions, fun — a life. Certain people made it their hobby to torment me and anyone close to me, so that we might never feel safe. And despite all the objective evidence confirming my innocence, the predominant narrative and subsequent discussion about my case still revolved around the question, “Did she do it?” 
 
 I can tune out the trolls, but the voices of seemingly reasonable people are more worrisome. “She brought it on herself,” some say. “She’s not the real victim.” Charlotte Gill, writing for The Independent, attributes public interest in my story to mere blood thirst and accuses me of capitalizing off Meredith’s tragic death. To her, my very presence is an affront. After years of wrongful imprisonment, having everything dear to me stripped away, I was released to an unceasing torrent of slut-shaming and slander. And Gill wants me to just disappear? I read that, curled up in a ball, and cried. 
 
 I didn’t get my old life back when I came home. No exoneree does. It took me years to feel comfortable and confident enough to trust new people. Random classmates at university took pictures of me and posted them to the Internet alongside lewd and aggressive commentary. Every employer who openly hired me was attacked for doing so. I took up self-defense classes, and everywhere I lived, I had an escape plan, just in case I was pursued by some crazy person who wanted to follow through with his threats. 
 
 I would like nothing more than to be simply Amanda Knox, family member, friend and writer, but I’ve had to accept that I’m also that girl who was wrongfully convicted of murder. It’s a realization that all exonerees must eventually face — once an exoneree, always an exoneree. 
 
 Many people can empathize with the murder victim and the murder victim’s family, but they cannot imagine being snatched up, as I was, as my family was, into a Kafkaesque nightmare. This is a problem because wrongful convictions happen more often than people realize, and they can happen to anyone. In many ways, mine was just an echo of the wrongful convictions that came before and a precursor to those that have come after. In other ways, mine was exceptional. My case was an international sensation that utterly dehumanized me, but that attention did put me in the unique position of being a rare exoneree whose voice is heard. I have the opportunity to shine light on the exoneree experience and the systematic errors that lead to wrongful convictions. 
 
 Professor Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan estimates that from 1973 to 1989, between 2.3% and 5% of death row inmates were innocent. He writes that 185,000 innocent people have served hard time. Since the first DNA exoneration took place, the Innocence Project has exonerated more than 345 people. There were 149 exonerations just last year, and every year that number keeps rising. Our media coverage often represents exonerees as two-dimensional artifacts, the fallout from brutal tragedy, or else in breezy, feel-good news flashes about “justice prevailing.” But after prison, exoneree lives grind on, and they suffer the consequences of society’s misconceptions and short attention span. 
 
 Most exonerees re-enter society with little support and even fewer guarantees. Government-sponsored programs designed to help guilty convicts reintegrate into society don’t normally exist for exonerees. Only 30 out of 50 states have compensation laws, and those are hamstrung by delays and a lack of uniformity. Those who were forced by police to falsely confess may not be entitled to any compensation. Many have also had to jump through numerous and expensive hoops to get their records expunged. Exonerees have lost years of networking and investment opportunities. They have a gaping hole in their résumé — the average number of years wrongfully served is 14. People who are young, poor and non-white are particularly vulnerable; the vast majority of exonerees are minoritymales. And while most don’t get international media coverage, they are marked in their own communities. Some don’t even have the support of their own families. 
 
 And of course, as I can attest, being exonerated does not mean that people will believe you are innocent. 
 
 To recognize the suffering of exonerees is to acknowledge that our justice system, and the people who implement it, may perpetrate injustice. It’s easier to believe that wrongful conviction is a distant anomaly, an unfortunate consequence triggered by questionable characters. We blame the wrongfully convicted for seeming suspicious just as we blame rape victims for wearing provocative clothing. 
 
 POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media 
 
 The exoneree also confuses our sympathies. When a wrongful conviction is overturned, the justice it represented evaporates. We had “closure,” and now we have nothing. But what feels like a loss is actually a gain, because that “closure” was really injustice disguised as justice. Every exoneration forces us to dredge up the original tragedy and accept the perceived perpetrator as a further victim. 
 
 Exonerees, for their part, provide us with unique perspectives that can improve the justice system and enrich our communities. For example, Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle advocate to abolish the death penalty. Ryan Ferguson investigates cases of wrongful conviction on the MTV series Unlocking the Truth. Marty Tankleff, Chris Ochoa and Jarrett Adams earned law degrees and now work to correct legal injustices. Brian Banks, Fernando Bermudez and Juan Rivera speak publicly, motivating others to overcome adversity, and Damien Echols is an artist and philosopher. These 10 exonerees alone served more than 140 years combined of wrongful imprisonment. Other exonerees are entrepreneurs, nurses, counselors, teachers, builders, artists, chefs, neighbors and friends. 
 
 I’m not a lawyer, investigator, researcher, or scientist. I was just a 20-year-old who loved languages and literature when I was locked away for a crime I didn’t commit. But I was fortunate. Intense media scrutiny drew experts and advocates to my defense. And because of their hard work, I now have opportunity to voice my experience and humanity as an exoneree. Most exonerees never get that chance, so I mean to share it. I will not disappear. I will advocate, I will bear witness. 
 
 Amanda Knox, an exoneree, is the author of Waiting to be Heard: A Memoir. 
 
 You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To submit a letter, comment or column, check our submission guidelines. 
 
 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share AMANDA KNOX: FROM TRIAL TO DOCUMENTARY Trailer: 'Amanda Knox' | 1:00 Netflix dives deep into the Amanda Knox saga in the new documentary of the same name. NETFLIX 1 of 9 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share AMANDA KNOX: FROM TRIAL TO DOCUMENTARY Amanda Knox gets the Netflix treatment | 1:48 Filmmakers Brian McGinn and Rod Blackhurst discuss their new documentary "Amanda Knox," about the case that gripped two continents and also involved the two U.S. presidential candidates. (Sept. 29) AP 2 of 9 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share AMANDA KNOX: FROM TRIAL TO DOCUMENTARY Sollecito on Knox trial: 'I need time to heal' | 0:38 Amanda Knox's former Italian boyfriend said on Monday he must heal the "wounds" inside his heart and soul, after he and the American were definitively acquitted of her British roommate's 2007 murder. (March 30) AP 3 of 9 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share AMANDA KNOX: FROM TRIAL TO DOCUMENTARY Raw: Amanda Knox grateful for saga's end | 1:27 Amanda Knox says she's "incredibly grateful" that Italy's highest court overturned her murder conviction in the slaying of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy, in 2007. AP 4 of 9 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share AMANDA KNOX: FROM TRIAL TO DOCUMENTARY Lawyer: Amanda Knox is very happy with ruling | 0:35 The lawyer for Amanda Knox said she is 'very happy' after Italy's highest court overturned her murder conviction in the 2007 slaying of British student Meredith Kercher. (March 27) AP 5 of 9 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share AMANDA KNOX: FROM TRIAL TO DOCUMENTARY Amanda Knox on verdict: 'I am tremendously relieved' | 1:18 Amanda Knox's ride through the Italian justice system is now over after a court overturned her conviction for the murder of her roommate in 2007. VPC 6 of 9 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share AMANDA KNOX: FROM TRIAL TO DOCUMENTARY Amanda Knox's fate to be decided by Italian court | 3:24 Italy's highest court is expected to announce its ruling in the Amanda Knox case. Her initial murder conviction was thrown out three years ago, but last year, her acquittal was tossed out too. VPC 7 of 9 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share AMANDA KNOX: FROM TRIAL TO DOCUMENTARY Amanda Knox murder conviction overturned | 0:41 Italy's highest court overturned the murder conviction against Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend Friday over the 2007 slaying of Knox's roommate, bringing a definitive end to the high-profile case. (March 27) AP 8 of 9 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share AMANDA KNOX: FROM TRIAL TO DOCUMENTARY Italy's high court reviews Amanda Knox's appeal | 1:20 Italy's high court took up the appeal of Amanda Knox's murder conviction Wednesday, considering the fate of the "very worried" American and her Italian former boyfriend in the brutal 2007 murder of Knox's British roommate. (March 25) AP 9 of 9 Last VideoNext Video Trailer: 'Amanda Knox' 
 
 Amanda Knox gets the Netflix treatment 
 
 Sollecito on Knox trial: 'I need time to heal' 
 
 Raw: Amanda Knox grateful for saga's end 
 
 Lawyer: Amanda Knox is very happy with ruling 
 
 Amanda Knox on verdict: 'I am tremendously relieved' 
 
 Amanda Knox's fate to be decided by Italian court 
 
 Amanda Knox murder conviction overturned 
 
 Italy's high court reviews Amanda Knox's appeal 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2eJ0er8 ||||| A new documentary on the 2007 Meredith Kercher murder traces how the tragic event morphed into salacious media entertainment – and talks to Knox about being reduced to a ‘sex-obsessed’ cartoon character 
 
 On the morning of 1 November 2007, in Perugia, Italy, Meredith Kercher lay beneath a duvet, in the house she shared with Amanda Knox. She was naked but for a T-shirt, covered in cuts and bruises, her neck cut so deep her head was almost severed from her body. 
 
 The police footage from that morning, revealed for the first time in a Netflix documentary, shows the sheer brutality of her murder. Blood is smeared in finger marks across the walls, running in deep rivulets across the floor. 
 
 “There are those who believe in my innocence and those who believe in my guilt. There is no in-between,” we hear Amanda Knox, Kercher’s flatmate, say in voiceover. “If I’m guilty, I’m the ultimate figure to fear, because I’m not the obvious one. But, on the other hand, if I’m innocent, it means that everyone is vulnerable, and that is everyone’s nightmare. Either I’m a psychopath in sheep’s clothing, or I am you.” 
 
 Amanda Knox review – slick documentary excels with unprecedented access Read more 
 
 The death of Meredith Kercher was like something from a horror movie, and so, for 10 years, that’s how it has been reported, in a drip-drip of headlines, innuendo and suggestions – “a sex game gone wrong”, with Kercher cast as victim of a “satanic ritual” presided over by the “she-devil” Knox. 
 
 As Rod Blackhurst, who directed the film with Brian McGinn, says: “This dark and tragic event had morphed into this episodic piece of consumer entertainment, and presented to us in the most salacious way possible, over and over and over again.” 
 
 “The search for justice for Meredith Kercher descended into a series of headlines, and the very real people involved became cartoons, depending on whether you saw them as guilty or innocent,” adds McGinn. 
 
 Blackhurst, 35, from upstate New York, and McGinn, 31, from Palo Alto, California, are debut film-makers, their only credits a handful of small-time comedy shorts. The film was born after they gained a serendipitous “in” – a mutual friend introduced them to Knox just a few weeks after she returned to her native Seattle following her acquittal. A little to their surprise, she granted them a meeting. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amanda Knox arrives in court for her appeal trial session in Perugia in 2011. Photograph: Reuters 
 
 After Knox cautiously agreed to the project, the directors spent years gaining access to the main players of the case – Knox’s Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, the sombre Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini and the voluble Nick Pisa, a freelance journalist who broke the story for the Daily Mail. 
 
 “We wanted to understand how it felt for the people at the heart of the story, from the inside out,” says Blackhurst. “These people found themselves as entertaining characters in a story made about them. But beyond these aggrandised, constructed caricatures were people trying to understand what had happened to them so they could try and move past it. That’s what we were trying to explore.” 
 
 Kercher’s murder and Knox’s supposedly rampant sexual appetite were linked by Mignini’s prosecution. Knox’s motive for the murder of a girl she scarcely knew, the prosecutor explains in the film, was her “lack of morality”, her desire for “pleasure at any cost”, which compelled her to wield a knife “that teases then plunges” into Kercher’s neck. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Still from the documentary, showing police evidence in the case. Photograph: Netflix 
 
 But of particular focus is how the mass media took this material and ran with it. “We realised this story was about the changing landscape of journalism itself,” Blackhurst says. “In 2007, we saw the beginning of Facebook and the rise of digital media, alongside the takeover of the 24-hour news cycle. That gave rise to clickbait, of stories being driven by headlines rather than reporting in the traditional sense of the word.” 
 
 When the film premiered at the Toronto film festival, the crowd were audibly repulsed by Pisa, the journalist happy to liken his front-page exclusives – about a young girl raped and tortured to death – to the sensation of having sex. “A murder always gets people going,” he says in the film. “Gruesome murder, throat slit, semi-naked, blood everywhere. What more do you want in a story?” 
 
 With swarms of journalists competing with Pisa on the ground in Perugia, it’s easy to see why the legal proceedings became a trial by media. Yet the directors are keen to defend Pisa. “Nick stands for a new generation of freelance journalists who, in the absence of dedicated correspondents from traditional news organisations, can report on stories for a large number of outlets – from tabloid news to traditional papers to television networks,” says McGinn. 
 
 “But the film is also an indictment of the culture that wants to consume these stories,” says Blackhurst. “The people who want to cast the stone at Nick are often the same people logging on every morning, keen to read the latest, grisliest titbits from the case.” 
 
 Pisa was happy to feed the beast. He got hold of a copy of Knox’s diary, leaked from the prison in which she was being held, in which she detailed her sexual history after being told, erroneously, that she was HIV-positive. “I think the photocopying places in Perugia must have made a fortune,” Pisa jokes in the film. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn. Photograph: Walker/Variety/Rex/Shutterstock 
 
 “Nick is extremely good at what he’s asked to do, which is to find headlines every six hours for a news cycle that rolls on 24 hours a day,” says Blackhurst. “Just look at the comments thread that follows any story about Amanda. It says a lot.” 
 
 The coverage marks a turning point, the directors say: the mingling of tabloid and broadsheet newspapers in the wild west of the internet, all in pursuit of traffic and eyeballs. “The story became driven by headlines,” McGinn says. “It was one of the first great examples of this post-truth age we now live in, where people respond to something primarily by how it makes them feel.” 
 
 Knox is now a global celebrity. At the airport on her way to the premiere, paparazzi swarmed round her and her new fiance, although she gave no interviews. In 2012, she agreed to a $4m (£3m) book deal with HarperCollins about her trial and imprisonment in Italy, and her eventual acquittal and release. 
 
 She claims, in the film, to hate the attention and the impact it has had on her life. “The whole world knew who I had sex with – seven men!” she exclaims. “And yet I was some heinous whore – bestial, sex-obsessed and unnatural.” 
 
 It’s clear that Knox was the victim of what is now called “slut-shaming”; her sexual desire as a young woman was used to implicate her in the brutal murder. “Were you into deviant sex?” she was asked in a primetime interview with a middle-aged man playing lay preacher. “Insensitive question, but hey, we’ve got to get to where this is.” 
 
 “Is Amanda’s sexual history something we should consider as part of the case, or is it a judgment based on how we perceive female sexuality, the question of whether a woman is allowed to have multiple lovers?” Blackhurst asks. 
 
 “People look into Amanda’s eyes as if that’s going to be reveal something about the physical evidence of the crime scene,” McGinn says. “She is talked of as this cipher who can accidentally reveal something about the case, based on whether or not she swallows, or blinks her eyes, or looks away at a certain moment.” 
 
 And yet, at the heart of this film, there remains a glaring absence. 
 
 Meredith Kercher was a 21-year-old student from Coulsdon, south London. She studied politics and Italian at the University of Leeds and worked as a tour guide and barmaid in Perugia to support her studies. The daughter of a British father and Indian mother, she had two brothers and a sister, and aspired to be a journalist like her father, John. Beyond that, little else is known of Meredith. Her family have always doggedly protected her privacy, as well as their own. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Meredith Kercher. Photograph: PA 
 
 So, the person at the centre of the trial of the century, as it was dubbed, and the circumstances that led to her torture, rape and unthinkably violent death, has remained abstracted – throughout the trial, and, subsequently, in this film. Kercher’s family are only seen in archival press footage, as well as one short interview that her grieving mother, Arline, gave on a street in the UK, eight years after her daughter’s death. 
 
 The directors reached out to the Kercher family to ask them to be part of the film, but never got a reply. Before its release to the press, the film was sent to the family, but there’s been no word on whether or not they have watched it. 
 
 It left the film-makers in a bind. “The death of Meredith was never the focal point of the way people were talking about this story,” Blackhurst acknowledges. “Meredith’s death became all about Amanda. There needs to be a constant reminder that this became entertainment, and no longer a question of the search for truth – of what happened that evening at that house in November 2007.” 
 
 It’s left to Mignini, the prosecutor of the case, to hint at the tragic cost of this viral phenomenon of a story. “When the family arrived in Perugia, they requested to see Meredith’s body,” Mignini says. “And her mother, with a gesture, and without saying anything, asked if she could give Meredith a kiss.” 
 
 Amanda Knox is available to watch on Netflix from on 30 September. ||||| CLOSE Netflix dives deep into the Amanda Knox saga in the new documentary of the same name. NETFLIX 
 
 I didn't get my old life back. No one does. Condemnation doesn't stop once you're found innocent. 
 
 Amanda Knox on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Jan. 31, 2014. (Photo: Mark Lennihan, AP) 
 
 Every day for the past nine years I've been called a slut and murderer by total strangers. In prison, it was hate mail. Outside of prison, it’s social media and hate mail. “Teach me how to get away with murder.” “I hope you will be alone forever.” “Murderess.” “Psychopath.” “Whore.” One person promised, in a comment on my personal website, to kidnap me in broad daylight, rip out my teeth and fingernails, electrocute me, and carve Meredith Kercher’s name into my body. 
 
 Meredith was a kind and outgoing British student who was murdered by Rudy Guede. She was my roommate, and I was accused of her murder by a prosecutor whose insane theories and disregard for evidence landed me in prison for four years. Italy's highest court ultimately exonerated me, finding “stunning flaws” in the investigation and “an absolute lack of biological traces” connecting me to the crime. 
 
 While the TV version of my life would end there, I have learned that condemnation doesn’t stop once you’re found innocent. From the moment I walked out of prison, my family and I have focused on healing and rebuilding our lives. But the beast of media sensationalism wasn’t satisfied. Tabloids snapped pictures of my every move, speculated on everything I did, and spun everything I said out of context. I was accused of buying my supporters, the media, and my freedom. I was shamed for having friends, opinions, fun — a life. Certain people made it their hobby to torment me and anyone close to me, so that we might never feel safe. And despite all the objective evidence confirming my innocence, the predominant narrative and subsequent discussion about my case still revolved around the question, “Did she do it?” 
 
 I can tune out the trolls, but the voices of seemingly reasonable people are more worrisome. “She brought it on herself,” some say. “She’s not the real victim.” Charlotte Gill, writing for The Independent, attributes public interest in my story to mere blood thirst and accuses me of capitalizing off Meredith’s tragic death. To her, my very presence is an affront. After years of wrongful imprisonment, having everything dear to me stripped away, I was released to an unceasing torrent of slut-shaming and slander. And Gill wants me to just disappear? I read that, curled up in a ball, and cried. 
 
 I didn’t get my old life back when I came home. No exoneree does. It took me years to feel comfortable and confident enough to trust new people. Random classmates at university took pictures of me and posted them to the Internet alongside lewd and aggressive commentary. Every employer who openly hired me was attacked for doing so. I took up self-defense classes, and everywhere I lived, I had an escape plan, just in case I was pursued by some crazy person who wanted to follow through with his threats. 
 
 I would like nothing more than to be simply Amanda Knox, family member, friend and writer, but I’ve had to accept that I’m also that girl who was wrongfully convicted of murder. It’s a realization that all exonerees must eventually face — once an exoneree, always an exoneree. 
 
 Many people can empathize with the murder victim and the murder victim’s family, but they cannot imagine being snatched up, as I was, as my family was, into a Kafkaesque nightmare. This is a problem because wrongful convictions happen more often than people realize, and they can happen to anyone. In many ways, mine was just an echo of the wrongful convictions that came before and a precursor to those that have come after. In other ways, mine was exceptional. My case was an international sensation that utterly dehumanized me, but that attention did put me in the unique position of being a rare exoneree whose voice is heard. I have the opportunity to shine light on the exoneree experience and the systematic errors that lead to wrongful convictions. 
 
 Professor Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan estimates that from 1973 to 1989, between 2.3% and 5% of death row inmates were innocent. He writes that 185,000 innocent people have served hard time. Since the first DNA exoneration took place, the Innocence Project has exonerated more than 345 people. There were 149 exonerations just last year, and every year that number keeps rising. Our media coverage often represents exonerees as two-dimensional artifacts, the fallout from brutal tragedy, or else in breezy, feel-good news flashes about “justice prevailing.” But after prison, exoneree lives grind on, and they suffer the consequences of society’s misconceptions and short attention span. 
 
 Most exonerees re-enter society with little support and even fewer guarantees. Government-sponsored programs designed to help guilty convicts reintegrate into society don’t normally exist for exonerees. Only 30 out of 50 states have compensation laws, and those are hamstrung by delays and a lack of uniformity. Those who were forced by police to falsely confess may not be entitled to any compensation. Many have also had to jump through numerous and expensive hoops to get their records expunged. Exonerees have lost years of networking and investment opportunities. They have a gaping hole in their résumé — the average number of years wrongfully served is 14. People who are young, poor and non-white are particularly vulnerable; the vast majority of exonerees are minoritymales. And while most don’t get international media coverage, they are marked in their own communities. Some don’t even have the support of their own families. 
 
 And of course, as I can attest, being exonerated does not mean that people will believe you are innocent. 
 
 To recognize the suffering of exonerees is to acknowledge that our justice system, and the people who implement it, may perpetrate injustice. It’s easier to believe that wrongful conviction is a distant anomaly, an unfortunate consequence triggered by questionable characters. We blame the wrongfully convicted for seeming suspicious just as we blame rape victims for wearing provocative clothing. 
 
 POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media 
 
 The exoneree also confuses our sympathies. When a wrongful conviction is overturned, the justice it represented evaporates. We had “closure,” and now we have nothing. But what feels like a loss is actually a gain, because that “closure” was really injustice disguised as justice. Every exoneration forces us to dredge up the original tragedy and accept the perceived perpetrator as a further victim. 
 
 Exonerees, for their part, provide us with unique perspectives that can improve the justice system and enrich our communities. For example, Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle advocate to abolish the death penalty. Ryan Ferguson investigates cases of wrongful conviction on the MTV series Unlocking the Truth. Marty Tankleff, Chris Ochoa and Jarrett Adams earned law degrees and now work to correct legal injustices. Brian Banks, Fernando Bermudez and Juan Rivera speak publicly, motivating others to overcome adversity, and Damien Echols is an artist and philosopher. These 10 exonerees alone served more than 140 years combined of wrongful imprisonment. Other exonerees are entrepreneurs, nurses, counselors, teachers, builders, artists, chefs, neighbors and friends. 
 
 I’m not a lawyer, investigator, researcher, or scientist. I was just a 20-year-old who loved languages and literature when I was locked away for a crime I didn’t commit. But I was fortunate. Intense media scrutiny drew experts and advocates to my defense. And because of their hard work, I now have opportunity to voice my experience and humanity as an exoneree. Most exonerees never get that chance, so I mean to share it. I will not disappear. I will advocate, I will bear witness. 
 
 Amanda Knox, an exoneree, is the author of Waiting to be Heard: A Memoir. 
 
 You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To submit a letter, comment or column, check our submission guidelines. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2eJ0er8
– Being cleared of murdering her roommate wasn't exactly easy. But the hard part, Amanda Knox says, is living under siege and constant shaming. "I have learned that condemnation doesn’t stop once you’re found innocent," Knox writes in USA Today. "From the moment I walked out of prison, my family and I have focused on healing and rebuilding our lives. But the beast of media sensationalism wasn’t satisfied," she says. Tabloids tailed her, classmates posted pictures of her online with "lewd and aggressive commentary." Threats sent her to self-defense classes and "everywhere I lived, I had an escape plan, just in case." This isn't the first time Knox has spoken out about the "Kafkaesque nightmare" that began with her arrest in 2007, at age 20, after roommate Meredith Kercher, 21, was found with her throat slashed. (Kercher's family believes Knox is guilty.) In 2013, Knox published a memoir, "Waiting to be Heard," asserting her innocence, and last month a Netflix documentary took a microscope to the case. "Either I’m a psychopath in sheep’s clothing, or I am you," Knox intones in a voice-over. Since Italy's highest court exonerated her and her ex-boyfriend of all charges in 2015 (one man was convicted), Knox says she's tried to get her life back on track while pelted with hate mail calling her a "murderess," "psychopath," and "whore." All that media scrutiny helped in one sense, Knox writes, drawing "experts and advocates to my defense. And because of their hard work, I now have opportunity to voice my experience and humanity as an exoneree." She promises to continue sharing her story. "I will not disappear. I will advocate, I will bear witness." (Read the full piece here.)