AIBU to think an Edinburgh festival show about Meredith Kercher's murder should be stopped?

[VivienneDelacroix]

Aibu to think that this show at the Edinburgh Festival should be cancelled? It mocks the circumstances around the murder of Meredith Kercher and serves it up as entertainment.

Not only is it horribly disrespectful of Meredith's family, but it also belittles the issue of violence against girls and women.

Meredith's siblings are calling for it to be pulled from the festival. There is also a petition calling for it to be stopped.

c.org/WXGTGJfpRh

That doesn’t address the inconsistency I described. I wasn’t discussing whether the law is flawed or claiming to know what anyone thinks of it. My point was that my speculation and some other posters speculation was met with ridicule and personal attacks (this is not at all directed at yourself) while extensive speculation supporting the opposing view has been treated very differently. I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong to speculate. But being able to speculate works both ways and if one side of the argument is silenced, the pointing out of double standards I do believe is justified.

Same here along with many people now.

False confessions happen regularly. Often happen in situations of intense psychological pressure from police. If anything I see it as proof that she was grossly mistreated by the police.

You can research false confessions to get a better understanding of it, the central park 5 is a famous case were 4 out of 5 confessed to a crime they did not commit.

Its quite obvious the Italian judicial system upheld this conviction to maintain some shred of dignity for what they did to AK.

That is the first time I have asked you?

I think the interrogation in which she accused Lumumba is a case in point of why the ITV show, with it's whimsical, magical-realism overtones, was a very poor choice in which to address a recent real life tragedy involving sexual violence, systemic racism, institutional misogyny etc.

We are shown a very short scene in which Knox is shouted at and (it's implied) struck lightly on the back of the head twice. I am not in any sense minimising police violence - to be struck at all is TOTALLY unacceptable - but nothing in the way the events are depicted seems likely to induce the kind of state in which one might understandably implicate a completely innocent friend in a monstrous crime. There are a somewhat fancifully framed series of point of view shots that depict some kind of weird almost super-natural appearance or vision of Lumumba - the whole thing feels quite trivialising to be honest, given the harm that was done to him by the events of that night.

If you choose to be provocative you have to expect people to be provoked. If you choose an inadequate and inappropriate format to tell an important story, you have to expect people to read between the lines in ways you can't control and may not want them to....

But you yourself are one of the people treating the two things differently. Hence for example you've not made multiple posts about speculation in response to those stating they think she was the killer. So if it's justified in relation to others, it's also justified with you, and it's a double standard that works both ways.

Also do you really think disagreeing with someone is silencing them? Obviously posts have been deleted, but it isn't posters on this thread who've done that. And you were clear upthread that the petition, ie a view that someone shouldn't be saying things in a particular setting, wasn't silencing.

I do have some sympathy with HQ there too, they walk a fine line when it comes to potentially defamatory content.

(Thanks for acknowledging I've not personally attacked though, appreciated).

I personally agree with some of what you wrote and I think it's good to have a two sided debate. The truth is that no one really knows the truth so there will always be people wondering or searching for the truth. I only have a problem with the debate becomes very one sided as a result from some posters after name calling, personal attacks and ridiculing people that have written speculative posts and then write paragraphs of their own speculation.

I think this is very well written. Completely agree with what you wrote. I think this perfectly articulates the views of many people in a way that I was not able to express and write about myself.

Superb post

There shouldn't be any place for name calling or vitreol on a thread like this - surely it is much more helpful to establish a safe space where everyone can calmly air their views and listen to opposing ones.

I have certainly heard arguments on here that have made me reconsider my initial (strong) reaction to the very existence of Cartwheel to some degree ....

Yes, I had the same. It's like there's a coordinated tag team of AK supporters policing anyone. They can become abusive. Had to report one.

I'm sorry, I think I only saw some of this (I did try to read the whole thread, but it's very long and I think I ended up slipping over some of it accidentally).

There is an irony if supporters of Knox are taking part in a name-calling pile-on, given that's one of the many things that Knox herself suffered (on a much larger scale of course, but the comparison is still somewhat valid if we are trying to learn anything from what happened to her).

I am not sure if I count as a supporter or not in terms of this thread. I do believe she was innocent of the murder based on all the evidence I have seen. And I actually believe she has the right to perform the show if there are people who wish to see it, though I think it is poor taste on her part to frame it as comedy, and overall I feel she comes across as an unpleasant, attention seeking and arrogant person, albeit one who has suffered a lot of injustices which may explain at least some of her actions.

I think the Lumumba question is really complicated. It seems to me that systemic racism played a part in his treatment by the Italian justice system, and the public even after his exoneration. And that this is yet another very serious issue that requires gravity and sensitivity in any discussion of it. (In fairness, it's important to add that nobody, including Lumuba and his legal team, seem to have accused Knox at any point of racist intent in her accusation of him.... )

I have definitely learned things from the thread and the more measured posters have given me reason to reconsider some of my views on Knox's past and current choices. But even having said that, some of it still feels really questionable to me.

Didn't you announce your departure a few pages back?

She put an innocent man in prison, he has since lost his business and I think, his home.

The police had already arrested Lumumba because they believed he was involved. My previous posts set out how they extracted Knox's statement implicating both herself and Lumumba. Whenever she said she was innocent and Lumumba was innocent, she was slapped and told she was lying. Contrary to Italian law, she was not provided with a lawyer. The interpreter was incompetent and believed her job was to help the police get Knox to give a statement implicating herself and Lumumba. The police interviewed her for over 12 hours at a time with 12 officers involved in the interrogation. Interrogations often lasted into the small hours of the morning. During interrogation, she was not provided with food or water. These are brainwashing techniques. The police did this to Lumumba, not Knox.

The police investigation was flawed but there was evidence to implicate her and Sollecito.

No, there was no credible evidence to implicate either of them, which is why the Italian courts have said not only that they were not guilty, but that they were definitively not involved.

The knife from Sollecito's flat had Meredith's DNA on it. How did it get there?

No, it did not. This was a lie in the original trial by the police forensic scientist. She refused to hand over her notes to the defence - a refusal which, in the UK, would have resulted in her evidence being excluded. When the appeal court appointed independent forensic scientists to look into the evidence, she refused to hand over her notes to them until ordered to do so by the court. When she did hand over her notes, it was immediately apparent why she had tried to hide them. Much of her evidence in the original trial was a lie, including this. Contrary to her claim in court, her testing had failed to find any of Meredith's DNA on the knife. Even if she had found some:

• She had not taken proper precautions to prevent and detect contamination, so any findings could be contamination
• Her laboratory was not certified to conduct Low Copy Number DNA testing and she carried out the test incorrectly, so any results she obtained were invalid
• The quantity of Meredith's DNA she claimed to have found was so low it could have been normal transfer through Knox getting some of Meredith's DNA on her clothes and then using the knife. The amount she falsely claimed to find was nowhere near enough to say the knife had ever been in contact with Meredith, and the prosecution's contention that this was the murder weapon is not consistent with the evidence - the knife is too big to be the murder weapon

Yes someone was found guilty, they said Knox and Sollecito were there too.

Guede received a reduced sentence when he said Knox and Sollecito were there too. He had previously tried to implicate an unknown third party. He continued to deny his own guilt and his version of events is clearly not consistent with the forensic evidence. I would not give his evidence any weight.

The murder was so brutal it had to be more than one person.

No, it did not. There was extensive forensic evidence of Guede's presence in the murder room, including evidence that he had sexually assaulted Meredith. There was no forensic evidence at all that anyone else was present. There was the bloodstained imprint of a knife on the bedding. That knife has never been recovered, but it appears to be of the right size to have inflicted all the wounds including the fatal wound. Meredith's injuries are consistent with being rapidly overwhelmed by her attacker. They do not require multiple attackers.

Apologies if this has already been dealt with on the thread, but Sollicito has also public expressed his disapproval of a comedy show as a format for discussing these events, despite being quite supportive of Knox's other artistic endeavours. (He apparently really liked the ITV show, for example).

But perhaps his views don't count for any more than anybody else's - I don't really know. I just thought it was interesting.

The Fringe is an arts festival. It is full of weird, wonderful and occasionally offensive content. It does not have a history of censorship, nor should it in a free society. No one is being forced to pay to go to this show.

I lived in Edinburgh for over 30 years and saw many hundreds of events at the Fringe, some I enjoyed, some I was so appalled by I walked out of, but I never considered that anything should be actually banned.

Those with no time for Amanda Knox should simply not go. Why have we got to this awful place societally where everything needs to be banned and people cancelled? I find it really depressing.

This is a really clearly written and helpful post, so thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

Just one thing I wanted to clarify, in the interests of total accuracy (and I am happy to be proven wrong) but I feel pretty confident Knox has said she was stuck just twice. I am NOT trying to minimise that, or saying that twice is fine - obviously it's a horrendous example of police brutality that they struck her at all. But as posters are seeking to establish as much clarity as we can, about events we weren't present for, it might be worth noting that she doesn't claim to have been subjected to prolonged periods of physical violence.

I changed my mind. Is that permitted? Or are you silencing me?

Yes, you are correct. She has only alleged she was struck twice. She was, however, repeatedly accused of lying and the interpreter suggested she might have forgotten details due to trauma and should try to imagine a different scenario (it isn't clear whether the interpreter was doing this on her own initiative of repeating what the police said). Getting someone to imagine scenarios and keeping them deprived of sleep, hungry and thirsty is a good way of confusing them to the point where they will have what amounts to a conversion experience and say what the interrogator wants. We used to see this in UK miscarriages of justice before the police were required to record interviews.

Why? Seems a bit odd. A psychologist might help you understand why you bully people online.

Mumsnet is a big place with its share of trolls, incredibly rude people, kind people, very knowledgeable people, bullies, fools and barely literate people.

It’s a bit of a minefield to be honest.

I don’t think that I saw any of the posts that have been deleted. But if you, or anyone else, persists in posting inaccuracies or hypocritical statements you will get called out by good faith posters. Not silenced, just invited to discuss your position.

Unfortunately some people will be trying to silence you but you can either ignore them (they can’t actually silence you) or choose to step away.

To be clear, it’s perfectly fine for you to disagree with my position as publicly and loudly as you like. I don’t want you to shut up. But I am also allowed to disagree with your position, publicly and loudly. The act of disagreeing is not silencing.

Mumsnet deleting posts is silencing - but they have to if they think they are libellous, and choose to remove personal attacks.

People voting to ban AK from doing her Fringe piece is an attempt at silencing.

Posts of ‘I’m leaving because you’re all too mean’ are actually ways of trying to control what other people post rather than engaging in good faith with what they are saying.