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“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell

The battle to control the past reaches the next phase on March 25th when the Italian Supreme Court is expected to rule again on the innocence or guilt of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. In its previous incarnation in 2013 it overturned Judge Hellmann’s acquittal of the pair and ordered that the conviction should be reinstated at a further second level trial. This was duly done in Florence last year by Judge Nencini.

Who controls the past controls the future

For the Supreme Court, the events that happened on the evening of November 1st 2007 in Perugia are no longer relevant. The fact that Rudy Guede murdered Meredith Kercher is beside the point. We are looking at the Italian concept of judicial truth here, not reality. George Orwell understood the importance of controlling the past as he explained in his dystopian novel, ‘1984’. The truth of Meredith Kercher’s death is in the past. The only person who is still alive and who was there was Rudy Guede and we are unlikely to hear from him on the subject. He has been effectively silenced by a tightly controlled judicial process that minimised his role as lone murderer by implicating others for his benefit.

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It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” – David St. Hubbins (Spinal Tap)

Coline Covington is a psychoanalyst – and by all accounts a respected one. She has practised for over twenty years in London and her clients have included “senior executives, politicians, artists, writers, film-makers, and people working in the health professions”.

She hails from the USA and was awarded a BA at Princeton University, moving on to Cambridge University for postgraduate studies, subsequently gaining a doctorate in sociology from the LSE. She has worked for local authorities and the Metropolitan Police and is a former Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council. She is a Training Analyst and Supervisor of the Society of Analytical Psychology and the British Psychotherapy Foundation. She is also former Editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology. This is altogether an impressive resume.  Continue reading →

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“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” – John F. Kennedy

Part Three – Myths 21 to 40

Myth 21 – Amanda Knox is sex crazed and owned a sex toy

A novelty vibrator was a joke going away present. Knox indicated in court that it was about one inch long and her friend Madison Paxton confirmed this. John Follain, the journalist who was close to Mignini, suggests in his book that it was four inches long. Why was this brought up at all? The only purpose of putting this irrelevant detail in the pubic domain was to shock more censorious jury members, titillate a prurient media and decrease the possibility of a fair trial. There is no evidence that women who own sex toys are more likely to murder than anyone else.

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Let us suppose that you have a daughter, sister or friend who travels abroad to study. And let us suppose that her house mate is tragically murdered in a botched burglary. That would be pretty traumatic for a young person you might think, but that is not the end of the story.

She stays in town without access to her belongings – they are locked in the villa where the crime took place. Most of the victim’s friends leave as fast as they can. Your daughter stays to help the police. They wear her out with questioning, subject her to an all night grilling and then frame her and her boyfriend.

If you don’t think this can happen, you have not been paying attention. If you don’t think a traumatised adolescent can be made to say whatever the police want them to say, you know nothing about the way miscarriages of justice are created.

It gets worse.

The prosecution briefs the media with ‘misinformation’ (if we are being polite). Most of it is never used in court, but it blackens your daughter’s name around the world and helps to ensure that she is found guilty in a trial that lasts a year. By then she has been in prison, as an innocent person, for two years. The same thing also happens to her now ex-boyfriend.

There is an appeal. Two years later, after another trial that lasts a year, a judge who has actually looked at the evidence pronounces that your daughter and her friend are not merely innocent because guilt cannot be proved, they are innocent because he is certain that they did not commit the crime.

Meanwhile the murderer, the man whose DNA and prints were all over the victim’s body and room, has received a reduced sentence because he chose a short trial and apologised. Conveniently for the prosecution, the ‘motivation report’ – the final judicial summary of the case against him – asserts that your daughter and her friend committed the crime with him and your daughter struck the fatal blow. This whole process took place without allowing your daughter’s lawyers to cross examine the murderer or challenge any of the evidence. She and her friend were not party to his trial.

Never mind, it is all over, you think. After four years the innocent people are out of prison and home.

It is not all over. The prosecution appeals against the acquittal and succeeds. Another trial is ordered and this time the Supreme Court gives clear instructions that the verdict should be guilty. The new appeal court complies.

There will be another appeal. If you think Kafka had it tough, you have no concept of judicial cruelty.

By now over seven years have passed since your daughter’s friend was murdered. Her attempts to reach out to the bereaved family are rebuffed. They believe she is guilty and want to see her in prison again. They have employed a tough lawyer and are suing her for damages as well.

The tabloid media still think that this is a did she/didn’t she thriller. Very few journalists are interested in studying the case and trolls continue to defile your daughter’s name across the internet.

And that is roughly where we are now.

The list of judicial and procedural malpractice is a long one. There is a petition asking for the governments of three countries to examine it. Read it. I hope you will be shocked. You should be.

Please sign the petition – and be thankful if your daughter has led a less traumatic life.

https://www.change.org/p/italy-the-uk-and-the-us-amanda-knox-raffaele-sollecito-were-framed-for-meredith-kercher-s-murder-investigate-italian-corruption

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“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” – John F. Kennedy

Part Two – Myths 1 to 20

Myth 1 – The Confession that was not a confession

There never was a confession. Knox and Sollecito were tired, nervous and traumatised following the murder and had been helping the police whenever they were asked to, every day. Prosecutor Mignini arranged to bring in crack interrogation teams, who usually worked on Mafia suspects. Former FBI agent Steve Moore describes in detail how the non-confession (in fact a confused, police induced, ‘false memory’) was obtained, here: http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/FBI7.html All Knox ever said was that she imagined a vision. Lumumba’s name was pushed at her by her interrogators. The convenient absence of recordings, the lack of an independent interpreter and the refusal by the police to allow her a lawyer, tell you all you need to know. In spite of all this pressure, Amanda did not confess to any involvement in a murder and failed to name the real murderer, Rudy Guede. How could she have done, when she was not there and could not have known?
The lie is given by Edgardo Giobbi (chief investigator):

“She told us what we knew to be true”

‘Which means they kept at her till she told them what they wanted to hear. Not truth or lies, but what they wanted to hear. If she hadn’t done it in 3 hours, they’d have taken 6, and if not 6 then 12. She never stood a chance.’ – commentator ‘freeski’, on the Injustice Anywhere Forum.

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“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” – John F. Kennedy

In October 2012 Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito had been at liberty for one year after four years of incarceration.  Their exoneration was clear but had failed to convince the army of trolls who stalk the case.  They were trapped by confirmation bias and remain so.  The public perception of guilt was fostered by the creation of myths, which still circulate today.  I published three articles on Ground Report, listing and explaining forty myths.  There are more, but I captured most of the common ones.  This is the introduction.  I will edit and post the myths here later.

Part one – Introduction

In other articles about the Kercher case I have explained the circumstances in which this miscarriage of justice was created and how it was sustained.  There was a rush to judgement, guilt was assumed and evidence was assembled or manufactured in an attempt to implicate the innocent.  Witchcraft was invoked to ‘sell’ a group sex theory; myths were created to suggest guilt and confirmation bias and schadenfreude confirmed this in the public mind.  The media accepted and repeated prosecution spin, without question, until after the first guilty verdict.

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The other day I was talking to an old friend.  She asked me why I first took an interest in the Meredith Kercher case and why I am still involved, over seven years later.  I call it the Meredith Kercher case because that is the name of the young woman whose life was tragically snuffed out in Perugia, Italy on the evening of November 1st 2007.  It is better known to the wider world as the Amanda Knox case because Amanda was falsely accused of murdering Meredith and it was alleged that she was assisted by her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.

After four years in prison, including a guilty verdict in 2009, Amanda and Raffaele were exonerated on appeal in 2011.  The appeal court was presided over by Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann who went out of his way to say that this was no mere acquittal on a technicality.  Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were innocent because the evidence proved that they could not be guilty. 

And that, we all thought, was that. 

We were wrong. 

We had not accounted for the Italian justice system.

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