Originally appeared on E! Online
Amanda Knox isn’t shying away from telling her kids the truth.
The 38-year-old — who was convicted of murder and spent years in jail over the 2007 killing of her study abroad roommate Meredith Kercher in Italy before ultimately being acquitted of the charges — revealed what she told her and husband Christopher Robinson’s 4-year-old daughter Eureka when she started asking about her wrongful conviction about a year ago.
“It’s very simple,” Knox told Today in an interview published Aug. 18. “It’s just, when Mommy was young, Mommy went to Italy, and she made friends and she had fun, but then someone hurt her friend, and the police thought Mommy hurt her friend, and so they put Mommy in jail.”
And the activist — who was exonerated of all charges for the murder by Italy’s highest court in 2015 after the evidence was deemed contradictory and the investigation was determined to be flawed from the start — noted that the story always concludes in a way that satisfies Eureka.
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As she explained she tells her little girl, “Mommy was in jail for a long time, and she was very sad. But then one day, Mommy proved that she was innocent and she got to go home, and then she met your daddy and had you and happily ever after.”
She quipped, “She loves it when it ends on her.”
For Knox — who also shares son Echo, 23 months, with Robinson — being transparent with her kids about her legal battle is important, especially considering a large part of the work she does now is focused on helping other people in similar situations. Not to mention, she recently served as executive producer on “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox,” a series based on her story that stars Grace Van Patten and premieres on Hulu Aug. 20.
“I don’t hide that I go every year to the Innocence Network Conference, right? And I’m friends with other wrongly convicted people,” Amanda explained. “I do a lot of criminal justice reform advocacy, and then, of course, we’re making the show, and my daughter is seeing an actress playing me, an actress playing her as a baby, and is curious and wants to know.”
And having to reframe the difficult chapter in her life has been beneficial to her as well.
“Even just telling this story to her, sometimes my daughter wants to play pretend the story of ‘Mommy goes to Italy,'” Knox said. “She’ll find, like, bars at a playground, and be like, ‘Look, I’m Mommy in jail.’ And it’s just the shift there of, ‘Oh, this is a game.’ Like, it’s not just a horrible, traumatic experience.”
She added, “It’s just that lightness of being of a child that really helps me carry the weight of it.”
(E! and Today are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)
