'Prison changed me forever' - Amanda Knox

Still from the Netflix documentary Amanda Knox.

Amanda Knox said the four years she spent in an Italian prison defined who she is today and spoke about the pain she went through.

In the rare appearance Thursday, Knox, 30, spoke in front of a panel of lawyers with the Westside Bar Association about her two convictions for the 2007 murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, before she was acquitted, according to the Daily Mail.

The two were studying in Perugia, Italy, when Knox found Kercher murdered in their shared apartment.

Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted for the murder. Knox, who was 20 at the time, spent four years in prison until she were released and acquitted in 2011.

"I went into prison as not yet a woman and I came out an adult woman and that period defined me," she told KTLA Thursday.

In her appearance Thursday, the Seattle native was also promoting her memoir and the Netflix documentary about her trials and convictions.

"I realized the courtroom was actually a battleground for storytelling. Where the most compelling story and not necessarily the most truthful wins," she said, Fox 11 reported.

Amanda Knox.

"The truth doesn't fit in a headline or a tweet or a fairytale format."

She added, to KTLA: 'The unfortunate thing about this case is that the prosecution decided, before the evidence came in, that I had to be guilty."

Even though the trial process and her time in prison were terrible, she said Thursday that the hardest part was the pain caused to her family.

"Everyone in my family suffered. And the worst thing of all - they didn't feel like they could share that with me. Because I was in trouble."

Since her acquittal, Knox has moved back to Seattle, finished college and is working as a writer.

She has a new boyfriend, novelist Christopher Robinson. The two started dating last year and moved in together a few months later.

Knox has also dedicated her life to helping the wrongly convicted through work with organizations including the Innocence Project.

When she spoke at the panel on Thursday, Knox said she wants to use her experience to help others.

"I have to tell my story so that the echo of it can reach people.

"I just want to show that it's not this distant difficult to understand thing. It's a human thing that can happen to anyone at anytime. No one is safe, but we can understand it."