Amanda Knox is facing her fears. The former exchange student who was convicted, then acquitted, of killing roommate Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007 stepped foot in that country Thursday for the first time since her release from prison eight years ago, per NBC News. The 31-year-old journalist will "speak about wrongful convictions and trial by media" at a conference presented by the Italy Innocence Project, as revealed in a Medium post. Decrying "irresponsible" media that "profited for years by sensationalizing an already sensational and utterly unjustified story," Knox wrote that she faces "a potentially hostile audience" in a country she fled "in a high-speed chase, paparazzi literally ramming the back of my stepdad's rental car."
She was again surrounded by media as she arrived in Milan on a flight from Dublin, per NBC and CNN. "Here we go... Wish us, 'Buon viaggio!'" (read "Have a good trip") she wrote on Instagram hours earlier as she prepared to set off from Seattle with fiance Christopher Robinson. In a tweet, she said she'd chosen not to do interviews ahead of her Saturday talk at the Criminal Justice Festival "in the hopes that what I will say in Modena will speak for itself." Still, her Medium post offers hints. As partners on a true crime podcast, she and Robinson work to "elevate the standard for how we think and talk about those whose lives are thrust into the judicial and media spotlight," Knox writes. Media "can be brave," she adds. "It can treat its subjects like the human beings they are." (More Amanda Knox stories.)