This was fascinating. I'm very late to the story, since I didn't watch the coverage at all when it was going on, and didn't remember who she was. But I was intrigued by the audio that was excerpted in Talking to Strangers so I checked it out. So my framing is that she was an innocent American college student who was falsely convicted - without having experienced all of this media "Foxy Knoxy" baggage. And I have to say her account makes a lot of sense. Maybe in hindsight I wouldn't have acted in the same way in this situation, but I totally buy that this naive, not-jaded, on-her-own-for-the-first-time, suburban, white college student would.
It ends up being a pretty scary story about how easy it is for the facts to be twisted by the police and by the media. Everyone seems to have very very strong opinions on this case. Even today, doing a google search, there are many many people out there who just hate this woman with a baffling passion. But she didn't ask for the media to focus on her and demonize her.