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Report: Knox alleges sexual harassment while in Italian jail

Oct 8, 2011, 13:06 GMT

Washington - Amanda Knox has claimed in a letter that she endured verbal sexual harassment from a high-ranking prison official while in jail in Italy, US broadcaster CBS News said on Saturday.

'We learn about sexual harassment inside prison where an administrator would take her up to his office alone at night and say a number of inappropriate things to her, and that left Amanda terrified,' CBS correspondent Peter Van Sant said ahead of a broadcast set for later Saturday.

In the special report to be broadcast at 22.00 ET (1800 GMT), Knox's father, Curt Knox, tells of her last days in custody and the period immediately after her release, speaking in an interview recorded in Seattle, where the family lives, on Wednesday.

'It's a nightmare period. And we've now kind of woken up and realized that the nightmare's over ... I lost one of my daughters for a while,' the father said.

In the interview, Curt Knox says his daughter's central aim at the moment is to finish her degree, suggesting she might go on to become 'an advocate for people that have been wrongfully convicted.'

He described his daughter as 'almost kind of reborn in a way,' but adds that she feels unable to go out in public because of the news crews and paparazzi camped outside her home.

Knox, 24, returned to the United States on Tuesday after an Italian appeals court overturned her 2009 murder conviction.

A trial court had convicted Knox and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito of murdering her British roommate on November 2, 2007. The body of Meredith Kercher, 21, was found half-naked with her throat cut on in the apartment they shared in Perugia.

The appellate court jury overturned the convictions on Monday, based on doubts over DNA evidence presented at the initial trial.

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