Why are both Johnny Depp and Amber Heard accusing one another of domestic violence?
THE FULL STORY
This seems to be an enigmatic and intriguing case. While the case is ostensibly a defamation suit over a newspaper story, with Depp suing Heard, there is one major dispute at its heart. Johnny Depp allegedly mistreated Amber Heard. Heard allegedly mistreated Depp, according to Depp. So, what really is the truth?
Surprisingly, in our post-Me Too era, it appears that the internet's strongest voices have overwhelmingly sided with Depp. While there is convincing evidence of domestic abuse on both sides of this marriage, it is less obvious if the evidence supports Depp's claim or whether he has a good chance of winning this case. Depp, on the other hand, has a more public profile. Despite the fact that it's been more than a decade since he released a real critical smash, he's amassed enough critical praise over the course of his long career to merit some respect. Depp, who has starred in films such as Edward Scissorhands, Donnie Brasco, and several Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, has been nominated for three Academy Awards and twice awarded People's S*xiest Man Alive. He was, at least for a while, one of those guys who appear to be able to get away with anything: a white male who is also a real A-list s*x symbol.
Depp's personal and financial problems started to evolve as his film career waned in the 2010s. Depp sued both his longtime business managers and his entertainment lawyer in 2017, alleging financial mismanagement. Depp is represented as a fading and delusional legend, cut off of reality by his money, celebrity, and massive amounts of drugs in an iconic Rolling Stone feature from the time. "A punchline," as Rolling Stone put it, "bankrupt, isolated, and one more misstep away from being blackballed from his business." When Heard first met Depp on the set of The Rum Diary in 2009, she was just starting to reach the point of being a household name. (At the time, both were involved in other relationships.) She earned her first prominent role as a supporting character in the 2008 Judd Apatow stoner comedy Pineapple Express, despite being 20 years younger than Depp. When The Rum Diary was released in 2011, it signaled the start of a new chapter in her career: portraying A-listers' love interests. Rumor went on to star in the films Magic Mike XXL and The Adderall Diaries in 2015. In 2017, she landed her biggest part yet as Mera, the queen of the DC Comics Aquaman trilogy.
All of this means that when these two met and during their marriage, Johnny Depp was a household name in the United States. Amber Heard was anything but. Furthermore, their romance paralleled Depp's protracted and public downward decline. Depp and Heard began dating in 2012 after splitting up with their respective partners. They became engaged in 2014 and married in 2015. Heard then filed for divorce in 2016. She filed a restraining order request four days later. Everything else would fall into place after that. Here's everything you need to know about the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard trial, including what we know, what we don't know, how everyone involved is spinning their story, and what it all implies for how we deal about gendered violence in the post-Me Too era.
Amber Heard is suing Johnny Depp for defamation over an op-ed she wrote for the Washington Post in 2018. "I came out against s*xual violence — and faced our culture's fury," the op-ed began. This must change." Heard never names Depp by name, but she describes herself as "a public person who represents domestic abuse." Depp and his attorneys contended, and a court agreed, that Heard is obviously insinuating that Depp assaulted her during their one-year marriage. Heard first publicly accused Depp of domestic abuse in May 2016, when she requested and won a temporary restraining order based on domestic violence only days after filing for divorce. Heard was lying, according to Depp's lawyer, and was "attempting to gain a premature financial resolution by alleging abuse." In August 2016, Heard dropped her request for a permanent restraining order after the couple struck an out-of-court divorce settlement. The two also released an united statement in which they inexplicably claimed that none of their contradicting claims regarding each other was accurate. "There was never an intent of bodily or mental injury" (so Depp wasn't violent), and "Neither party has made false charges for financial benefit" (so Heard wasn't lying to get a higher financial settlement). Heard, who allegedly received $7 million in the deal, said that she'd donate her payout to charity, dividing it between the ACLU and the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, in what looked to be a gesture aimed to back up the second part of that joint statement. (It will be brought up again later.)
Heard couldn't have been lying about Depp assaulting her for money, because she didn't get any money out of the divorce, according to the announcement. What possible reason could she have for making her claim if it wasn't true? However, gossip sites quickly allied themselves with Depp and labeled Heard a liar. Heard alleges in her op-ed that after raising her charges, she was pulled from a movie and a fashion ad campaign. Meanwhile, Depp continued to work. He was cast as a prominent character in the Harry Potter spinoff franchise Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in December 2016.
It's important remembering that this first wave of denials occurred in early 2016, months before Donald Trump's victory and more than a year before allegations against Harvey Weinstein erupted, causing the culture to explode into a new way of talking about celebrity abuse. Numerous feminist pop culture commenters were outraged by the news, but there was little enthusiasm there overall. Like Rob Lowe's s*x video, it looked ready to fade away after the divorce settlement, like a piece of cultural debris, a hazy recollection that America basically agrees to grimace away from and just not speak about too loudly. Depp would remain working while Heard would most likely not, and that would be the end of it. The world changed when the initial allegations against Harvey Weinstein were made public in October 2017. The thought that prominent men all throughout Hollywood were assaulting women and getting away with it sparked widespread indignation. The notion that Johnny Depp's ex-wife felt compelled to seek a restraining order about him was shocking.
It was in this context that Heard was appointed as the ACLU's ambassador for women's rights, and it was in that position that she penned her op-ed in December 2018. Three months later, in March 2019, Depp sued her for slander, demanding $50 million. Heard countersued for $100 million in January 2021. Heard's countersuit is expected to be heard in court later this year, also in Virginia. The present trial is for Depp's case against Heard. Perhaps more perplexingly, this instance is similar to a do-over. In 2018, Depp filed a libel suit against the executive editor and publisher of the British tabloid The Sun for referring to him as a "wife abuser" in an article, moving the matter to the reputedly more plaintiff-friendly British courts. The burden was on the Sun to prove that its claims about Depp was true when Depp's action against the Sun went to trial in London in 2020. Despite the odds, the publication managed in getting Heard to identify 14 incidents in which she said Depp mistreated her. Soon after Depp stated that he had been asked to quit from the Fantastic Beasts franchise, the judge recognized that "Mr. Depp put her in dread of her life." However, since Depp sued the Sun rather than Heard, the verdict was insufficient to dismiss Depp's action against Heard. It will be carried out in Virginia.
Heard claims Depp went on a three-day violent tear in March 2015, during which he struck her constantly. Heard and Depp both agree that the tip of Depp's finger was severed at this time, and that he subsequently used the damaged finger to scribble derogatory graffiti about Heard on a mirror and lampshade. Heard's sister and her friend Rocky Pennington both testified that they saw her covered in bruises and cuts immediately after the episode in question, and that Heard informed them at the time that Depp had assaulted her. According to text messages, Depp's crew agreed to declare they didn't know how he lost the tip of his finger.
“I accept that she was the victim of sustained and multiple assaults by Mr Depp in Australia,” wrote UK Judge Andrew Nicol in his judgment. “It is a sign of the depth of his rage that he admitted scrawling graffiti in blood from his injured finger and then, when that was insufficient, dipping his badly injured finger in paint and continuing to write messages and other things. I accept her evidence of the nature of the assaults he committed against her. They must have been terrifying. I accept that Mr Depp put her in fear of her life.” There is also solid evidence that Heard was aggressive toward Depp throughout their relationship. Depp has made public audio recordings of talks he had with Heard during the course of their relationship. Heard mentions assaulting Depp in the tapes, which were originally revealed by the Daily Mail shortly before the UK trial in January 2020. "I'm sorry that I didn't... smack you across the face in a genuine slap, but I was striking you, not pounding you," she explains. You have not been punched, babe. I'm not sure what the motion of my real hand was, but you're alright; I didn't damage you, I didn't punch you, I was hitting you."
"I simply couldn't stand the notion of more physicality, more physical violence on each other," Depp says, telling Heard, "I'm afraid to death we're a fucking crime scene right now." "I can't promise you I won't become physical again," Heard responds. "God, sometimes I become so angry that I lose it." Heard appears to criticize the concept that Depp may pose himself as a victim in another audio clip from a conversation about the Australia incident. “I lost a fucking finger, man,” says Depp. “I had a can of mineral spirits thrown at my face.” “You can tell people it was a fair fight, and then see what the jury and judge thinks,” Heard says. “Tell the world, Johnny. Tell them, ‘Johnny Depp, I, a man, I’m a victim, too, of domestic violence, it’s a fair fight,’ and see how many people believe or side with you.”
Depp's lawyers played this tape during Depp's evidence during the trial in Fairfax in April 2022. When Depp's lawyer questioned how he reacted when Heard suggested he tell the public he was a victim of domestic abuse, Depp answered, "I said, 'Yes, I am.'" The discrepancy between Depp's reported past and Heard's is also being used by Depp's team. While Depp has been accused of causing property damage and making verbal threats in the past, he has never been accused of the level of violence Heard recounts in her narrative, which prior girlfriends have regarded as uncommon of him. Heard, on the other hand, must account for some minor allegations of aggression. Heard and her then-girlfriend Tasya van Ree got into a fight at an airport in 2009. Heard was detained after reportedly striking van Ree's arm, but no charges were filed. Van Ree has issued a statement in support of Heard, claiming that the event was exaggerated and attributing it to the officers' s*xism and homophobia. In April, Heard's former assistant, Kate James, said in court that when she sought Heard for a raise, Heard spit in her face.
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There was also proof that Depp's staff has previously utilized social media bots to incite outrage against Heard. Heard's team commissioned a research from Bot Sentinel, an organization that employs artificial intelligence to identify troll bots, in 2020. It discovered many suspicious Twitter accounts, including one that said, "Fire her from all her positions ban this mad liar," and another that said, "I am beginning a petition." To ban Amber Heard from Hollywood!" The report does not imply that most every Johnny Depp fan on the internet is a robot. However, it does imply that Depp's crew has a history of purposefully magnifying the discourse around him in order to make it look like public opinion is more cohesive on his side than it is. Depp has also become a type of emblem for individuals who wish to talk about male victims of domestic abuse, both in good and bad faith. On Twitter, serious remarks about Depp abound with the hashtag #BelieveMaleVictims. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, one in every seven adult men in the United States has been the victim of intimate partner violence, yet men are less likely than women to disclose their abuse or seek treatment. Depp supporters argue that his willingness to identify as a victim of domestic violence is a significant step toward breaking the stigma.
The society has spent more than a decade praising Depp's brilliance, attractiveness, and charisma, and that appreciation isn't going away anytime soon. Depp's admirers have placed a significant emotional investment in him, and many of them are eager to seize any uncertainty in this case as proof of Depp's innocence. There are many uncertainties in a trial this complicated.In the end, maybe the failure to deal with ambiguity is the most damning aspect of the greater debate around this trial. When presented with a portrayal of a relationship in which there is convincing evidence of violence and destructive conduct on both sides, our society is reluctant to believe that we may be witnessing a tale without heroes. Instead, we expect a neat story with a heroic redemption arc — and if the hero is a beloved, charming, and powerful white male, all the better.
