Amanda Knox shares the reality of intimate relationships in prison.

What do we really know about relationships in prison?

What we’ve seen on Orange is the New Black? That Ruby Rose looks sexy with her shirt off? We’re familiar with drama between inmates, but then months later we see them on the red carpet and forget about the real women who aren’t movie stars who are spending their days and months and years behind bars, in a concrete cell, far from their family and friends.

When it comes to navigating relationships in prison, we really don’t know anything.

Now, Amanda Knox, one of history’s most notorious female prisoners, has shared her experiences of life behind bars. It’s a story of a straight woman in an all-female prison. More than this, it’s a story of a woman who is innocent in a place for the guilty.

“Prison is an isolating place,” Knox wrote in an essay for Broadly. “You’re forcibly removed from your homes and support network. You’re deprived freedom of movement, of social interaction, and of time. You’re forced to submit to total surveillance and control by strangers, alongside strangers. But relationships help keep us sane.”

“Most of my fellow inmates were bigger, tougher, meaner, more desperate, and had less to lose than me, so I never let my guard down. But I was stubborn, too. I was innocent, and for a long time, I refused to integrate into a world that didn’t belong to me. I earned my peace by helping inmates write their letters and translating for non-Italian speakers, but I was always quiet and withdrawn, my nose in a book or running laps of the yard.”

Knox travelled to Italy from Seattle in the US for a university exchange when she was 20. On September 20, 2007 Knox moved into a basement apartment at Via della Pergola with three other people. On November 2, one of the girls, Meredith Kercher, was murdered and it was Knox who found the body.

What followed was an arrest - Knox was charged with murder, sexual assault, carrying a knife, theft and simulating a burglary. Two years later, there was a trial. Knox was found guilty and sentenced to 26 years imprisonment. Then, there was an appeal case. In October, 2011, Knox was found 'not guilty', released from prison and returned to US.

It wasn't over. In 2013, there was a retrial. In January, 2014 Knox was found 'guilty' again. And, finally, in March, 2015 the ultimate appeal was heard by the courts and Knox was declared innocent.

She spent seven years uncertain of her future. Four of those years imprisoned.

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Four years of isolation and complicated relationships with women with unclear motivations.

"Inmates had crushes on one another. They passed love letters through the bars. They gave each other presents: drawings of flowers, or little crocheted satchels for holding a Walkman," Knox wrote for Broadly. "One half of a notoriously tumultuous couple sulked and glared whenever her partner acted too friendly with other inmates. There were tearful breakups, and sometimes fistfights between new partners and exes. But for all the couples who acted like teenagers, there were as many as unshakably self-contained as if they had been married for 20 years. Many of these women will have identified as heterosexual—colloquially, they were, 'gay for the stay'."

In some cases, Knox says, the relationships between inmates would last. They become real and successful and deep and meaningful connections in a desperate circumstance.

"Kristine Bunch and Rebecca, like many other inmates, formed what psychologists call a resilient relationship. It was deep and intimate," Knox wrote, referencing Kristine Bunch who wrongfully imprisoned for the death of her son and 'Rebecca', which is an alias for Bunch's partner inside.

"These are relationships that enable people to survive adverse life circumstances. In difficult conditions, finding someone you connect with can be enormously psychologically beneficial."

For Knox, it was more difficult.

"Singled out as 'the famous one' by both inmates and officers, I spent my first eight months in isolation, and after that, prison staff steered visiting politicians to my cell door to show me off," she wrote. "My fellow prisoners resented me for all the attention I received. I was on the news almost every day, I received copious mail, my family visited often, and I was always able to afford basic commissary."

Then she met Leny, a small time drug dealer. Leny would follow Knox on her runs around the exercise yard. They would share espressos. Knox was suspicious at first. But, over time, they became friends. Knox was not, however, interested in anything more.

"Leny wanted to hold hands. 'I've changed women before,' she'd tell me. 'I can do things to you that no man can.' I felt objectified and I'd get annoyed. 'You can't change me,' I'd respond. She'd think I was playing hard to get. One day, Leny kissed me," Knox wrote.

"I gritted my teeth and half-smiled, wavering between embarrassment and anger. It was bad enough that the prison institution took ownership of my body―that I was caged and strip-searched on a regular basis and had already been sexually harassed by male guards. As a prisoner, Leny should have understood that, but unlike me, Leny was serving a short stint, and didn't feel as acutely as I did the loss of privacy, dignity, and autonomy. Leny didn't know what it felt like to have her past, present, and future stolen―not like I did."

"I told Leny that since she couldn't respect my boundaries, we couldn't be friends anymore."

Knox's reasons as to why the public is so intrigued by intra-prison relationships is particularly interesting.

"The idea of women in prison brings out the horny teenage boy in many of us—perhaps it's the implied lesbianism—but there's also something deeper," Knox wrote. "As any good scholar of Foucault knows, a woman in prison is by definition a woman controlled by oppressive, primarily masculine forces. Together, these two factors can help explain why the sexuality of incarcerated women is endlessly fascinating to the wider public.

But she says, they are not so glamorous.

Firstly, they are forbidden.

"Although relationships are common in prisons, gestures of intimacy between inmates are technically forbidden. Inmates often risk punishment: a formal write-up docking time for good behaviour, stints in solitary confinement, or even involuntary transfer if they act openly as a couple," she wrote. "Identifying as homosexual, or exhibiting homosexual behaviour, may result in harassment by the correctional officers."

Second, they are simply human nature.

"The relationships inmates establish with each other are treated as nothing more than kinky lies to be ashamed of upon returning to the real world," she wrote. "But they're not. 'Gay for the stay' is an insensitive oversimplification that signals a lack of understanding about what it's really like to be imprisoned, and an underestimation of human nature."