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THE SISTER OF Meredith Kercher has said a show by Amanda Knox, who was convicted of her murder and later cleared, “normalises and trivialises violence against women”.

British foreign exchange student Meredith Kercher was killed in Perugia in 2007. Her American roommate Amanda Knox was arrested and later convicted of murder and sexual assault in 2009 alongside her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

The couple maintained their innocence and, after years of legal battles, were acquitted of sexual assault and murder by Italy’s highest court in 2015.

Knox will now perform the show, named Cartwheel, which references a story that claimed she did cartwheels in the police station after her friend’s death, at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

Nearly 9,000 people have signed a petition which calls for the show to be cancelled.

Stephanie Kercher told BBC Breakfast: “It’s left a massive void in our lives, and Amanda is naturally free to continue with her life as she wishes, but I think the problem with this particular project is that it is comedy.

“And whilst I appreciate comedy is there to push the boundaries… it very much normalises and trivialises violence against women and Meredith in particular.

“I think in this case it’s a position where it’s not a generic topic, it’s targeting an individual traumatic case and an individual person and family, and I feel very strongly that Meredith wouldn’t agree with that.

“I have read certain comments that she’s made that Meredith would have found it funny, and Meredith absolutely wouldn’t find these topics of any comedy value.”

In an interview with The Telegraph earlier this month, Knox said that she believed Meredith would “appreciate the show because it grapples with what it means to be a young woman, and it is honest”, adding that she thought her late roommate would have found it “funny”.

In a post on Instagram, Knox said: “Cartwheel is a show about motherhood, raising a daughter in a world that is unfair and dangerous for women, and what it costs to be the kind of mother who tells her the truth about that.

She said that neither the author of the petition nor anyone who signed it has seen the show.

“The petition contains many false assumptions and completely mischaracterizes the show,” she wrote.

“Cartwheel honors Meredith Kercher’s memory and calls out the violence that was done to her and to me.”

Responding to the calls to cancel, the Fringe Society director Tony Lancaster said they are “not afraid of controversy”.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, Lancaster said: “As far as I’m concerned, I believe that if you are opening up a stage and calling it an open access festival and inviting people in to tell their stories, you have to be prepared for some controversy – it’s going to happen.

“As sympathetic as we are to individual cases that crop up, and absolutely as a parent, I can relate to the pain that they describe, but that can’t be a criteria, it can’t be one of the lenses that we look through.”

Knox has previously said she would be willing to speak to Meredith’s family about the show, which she claims does not “joke about Meredith’s death”.

She has previously shared her story in documentaries, an eight-part TV drama she produced with Monica Lewinsky, and books.

Rudy Hermann Guede was convicted of Meredith’s murder in 2008. He was released from prison in 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year term.

Both Knox and Edinburgh Fringe have been contacted for comment.

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