Supporters of Seattle's Amanda Knox have launched a new fund-raising web site to help defray the enormous expenses of her upcoming murder trial in Italy.

Knox, 21, has been in prison since being arrested by Italian police a year ago on suspicion that she killed her British roommate Meredith Kercher while the two were attending a university in Perugia, Italy.

During that time, attorney's fees and the cost of travelling back and forth between their home in Seattle and Italy have put a heavy financial strain on her parents - and the trial hasn't even begun yet.

Curt Knox and Edda Mellas, who are separated but remain friendly, have also had to foot the bill of staying near Perugia so that they can regularly visit their daughter behind bars.

And they have hired a highly respected, Rome-based lawyer to fight the charges against their daughter and have had to pay for the services of one of Italy's top forensic experts, according to the London-based news site Telegraph.co.uk.

The Amanda Knox web site, at www.amandadefensefund.org, is intended to help defray some of those soaring expenses.

"She's our daughter and we'll do everything possible to help her, no matter the cost," Mellas said in an interview with an Italian magazine, Oggi ('Today').

"But if things go on for too long, we don't know what we'll do. We're not well-off people."

Amanda Knox's new web site, which provides several different ways of contributing to her defense fund, shows scenes from her life before her arrest on lurid charges that she killed Kercher during a sex game that turned violent.

There are, for instance, photos of Amanda on her seventh birthday, playing soccer during middle school and at her graduation from Seattle Prep in 2005. All show a smiling, wholesome-looking girl living a normal life in the Pacific Northwest.

The site also includes testimonials from friends and family members, including her grandmother, Elisabeth Huff, who wrote, in part:

"I know all of you have heard the ugly lies about Amanda and her tragic and unjust persecution in Italy. I would like to say a few words to the real Amanda, that we all know and love.

"She has been an absolute lovely, well behaved and loving child. From preschool through her time at the University of Washington she was a gifted, serious and successful student. She loves sports, books, music and the outdoors ... "

Her aunt, Janet Huff, writes: "I have always thought of her as one of the most genuinely caring and sensitive young people I know."

The site also provides the address for Amanda's defense fund and suggests other ways to help as well, such as donating airline miles.

Prosecutors allege that Kercher, 21, had her throat cut when a sex game involving Knox, 21, her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 24, and an unemployed drifter, Rudy Guede, turned violent.

Guede, 21, who was born in Ivory Coast but emigrated to Italy as a child, was last month found guilty of murder and sexual assault by a Perugia court and sentenced to 30 years in jail.

Knox and her former lover go on trial in Perugia on Dec 4.

Knox's mother says her daughter finds prison life extremely hard but writes and reads a lot, studies Italian, French, German and Russian and hopes to become a translator once she is released.

Her portrayal in the Italian press as sexually precocious was wrong, her parents said.

"She was never a man-eater," her father told the Italian magazine. "She had her first sexual encounter when she was in her final year of high school, whereas these days kids start at 13 or 14 years old. It's true she smoked marijuana from time to time, but she certainly wasn't a drug addict."

On the day that Miss Kercher was found dead, Miss Knox phoned home, telling her mother: "Something strange has happened, Mom. I don't really understand, I'm fine but something odd has happened."

"That was the beginning of our nightmare," Mellas said. "We'd like to say to the investigators in the case they should get to know our daughter and spend a bit of time with her. Then they would have no doubt about her innocence."