The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial, defined

Johnny Depp is now interesting the one win Amber Heard obtained of their beautiful defamation trial this summer time. In June, Depp was awarded $15 million in damages, together with $5 million in punitive damages, which the choose capped to $350,000, the authorized restrict in Virginia. In complete, he’s entitled to $10.35 million. The jury awarded Heard $2 million, with the discovering that former Depp lawyer Adam Waldman had defamed her. Now, TMZ experiences that Depp is interesting Heard’s win. Heard already filed an attraction on Depp’s win in July.

The counter-appeals are simply the most recent growth within the media sensation of the Fairfax County, Virginia, trial of Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard. When the trial was in oral arguments this spring, the nation was riveted. Vanity Fair reported that as Court TV broadcast the trial, it doubled its daytime rankings. Hashtags related with the trial have repeatedly trended throughout Twitter, as viewers watch and talk about the superstar case of the 12 months — its messiness, its scandal, the glamorous film stars at its coronary heart, and the query of what to imagine and the way a lot.

This was a murky, perplexing trial. While it was technically a defamation trial over a newspaper article — with Depp suing Heard and Heard countersuing Depp — at its heart was one large battle. Amber Heard mentioned Johnny Depp abused her. Depp mentioned Heard abused him. So what’s the reality?

Strikingly for our post-Me Too world, each the jury and the loudest voices on the web overwhelmingly sided with Depp. That’s even though Depp already misplaced one model of this case within the UK. And whereas there’s compelling proof that violence got here from each individuals on this marriage, it’s removed from clear that Heard was the first aggressor.

What Depp does have is the stronger public profile. Though it’s been over a decade since he put out a real vital hit, he’s delivered sufficient acclaimed work over the course of his lengthy profession to earn himself a good quantity of goodwill.

In a press release, Heard attributed Depp’s win squarely to that profile. “I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband,” she mentioned. “I’m even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women. It is a setback. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously.”

The star of hits like Edward Scissorhands, Donnie Brasco, and the various, many Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, Depp has been nominated for 3 Oscars and been named People’s Sexiest Man Alive twice. For some time, no less than, he was a kind of people who find themselves so bankable that they appear in a position to get away with something: a white man who can be a real A-list intercourse image. He was up there within the higher echelon: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Johnny Depp.

As Depp’s movie profession declined over the course of the 2010s, his private and monetary troubles started. In 2017, Depp sued each his longtime enterprise managers and his leisure lawyer, claiming that they had mismanaged his funds.

An notorious Rolling Stone profile from this era paints Depp as a fading and deluded icon, lower off from actuality by his cash, his fame, and copious quantities of medication. He is, Rolling Stone declared brutally, “a punchline: bankrupt, isolated and one more mistake away from being blackballed from his industry.”

Heard, alternatively, was simply starting to strategy the purpose of turning into a family identify when she first met Depp on the set of The Rum Diary in 2009. (At the time, each have been in relationships with different individuals.) Over 20 years youthful than Depp, she had her first main job as a supporting character within the 2008 Judd Apatow stoner comedy Pineapple Express. When The Rum Diary got here out in 2011, it was an indication that she was coming into a brand new part of her profession: enjoying the love curiosity of A-listers.

From there, Heard went on to play main roles in 2015’s Magic Mike XXL and The Adderall Diaries. And in 2017, she was forged in her greatest function so far as Mera, the queen in DC Comics’ Aquaman franchise.

All that is to say that when these two figures met, and all through their marriage, Johnny Depp was a recognized amount to the American public. Amber Heard was very a lot not. Moreover, their relationship coincided with Depp’s lengthy and really public downward spiral.

By 2012, Depp and Heard had cut up up with their respective companions and begun courting one another. In 2014 they obtained engaged, and in 2015, they obtained married.

Then, in 2016, Heard filed for divorce. Four days later, she filed a request for a restraining order. Everything else would observe from there.

Here is your information to the trial of Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard: what we all know, what we don’t know, how everybody concerned is spinning their narrative, and what all of it means for the way forward for how we discuss gendered violence within the post-Me Too world.

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Who is suing whom and why?

Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for defamation due to an op-ed she revealed within the Washington Post in 2018. In the op-ed, headlined “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change,” Heard by no means mentions Depp, however she refers to herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”

Depp and his attorneys have argued, and a choose has agreed, that Heard is clearly implying that Depp abused her over the course of their year-long marriage.

Heard first publicly accused Depp of home violence in May 2016 when, days after submitting for divorce, she requested and acquired a short lived restraining order on the grounds of home violence. Depp’s lawyer promptly issued a press release saying that Heard was mendacity, “attempting to secure a premature financial resolution by alleging abuse.”

When the pair ultimately reached an out-of-court divorce settlement in August 2016, Heard withdrew her request for a everlasting restraining order. The pair additionally issued a joint assertion that bizarrely made the declare that neither of the contradictory statements every made about one another have been true. On the one hand, “There was never an intent of physical or emotional harm” (so Depp wasn’t abusive), and on the opposite, “Neither party has made false accusations for financial gains” (so Heard wasn’t mendacity for a greater monetary settlement).

In what seemed to be a transfer meant to again up the second half of that joint assertion, Heard, who reportedly obtained $7 million within the settlement, introduced that she would donate her settlement to charity, dividing it between the ACLU and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. (This will come up once more later.)

The announcement gave the impression to be sending a sign: Heard couldn’t have been mendacity about Depp abusing her for cash, as a result of she didn’t get any cash out of the divorce. What motivation for making her accusation might she have, except it have been true?

Regardless, gossip retailers like TMZ quickly aligned themselves with Depp and declared Heard a sure liar. In her op-ed, Heard claims that she was dropped from a film and a style promoting marketing campaign after making her accusations. Depp, in the meantime, saved working. In December 2016, it was introduced that he would play a key function within the Harry Potter spinoff franchise Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

This first wave of accusations and denials all got here pretty early in 2016, months earlier than the election of Donald Trump and greater than a 12 months earlier than the accusations towards Harvey Weinstein that may ship the tradition exploding into a brand new manner of speaking in regards to the abuses of well-known males. Some feminist popular culture commenters (myself included) have been up in arms in regards to the story, however by and enormous there was little vitality there. After the divorce settlement, it appeared poised to soften away like a bit of cultural ephemera, a imprecise reminiscence that America largely agrees to wince away from and simply not discuss too loudly, like Rob Lowe’s intercourse tape. Depp would hold working and Heard in all probability wouldn’t, and that may simply be the best way issues went.

Then, in October 2017, the primary accusations towards Harvey Weinstein dropped, and the world modified. Suddenly there was intense outrage round the concept that highly effective males throughout Hollywood have been abusing ladies and getting away with it. The concept that Johnny Depp’s ex-wife felt the necessity to get a restraining order towards him was abruptly very highly effective.

It’s in that ambiance that Heard was named ambassador on ladies’s rights for the ACLU, and in that capability that she wrote her op-ed in December 2018. Three months later, in March 2019, Depp filed a defamation lawsuit towards her in search of $50 million. In January 2021, Heard countersued for $100 million. Heard’s countersuit seems more likely to go to courtroom later this 12 months, additionally in Virginia. The trial that simply concluded is Depp’s lawsuit towards Heard.

Perhaps extra confusingly, this case is one thing like a do-over. In 2018, Depp sued the manager editor and writer of the British tabloid The Sun for libel after it referred to him as a “wife beater” in an article, bringing the case to the notoriously extra plaintiff-friendly British courts.

When Depp’s swimsuit towards the Sun went to trial in London in 2020, the burden was on the Sun to point out that its assertion about Depp was right. Despite the percentages stacked towards it, the newspaper, which referred to as on Heard to element 14 situations throughout which she mentioned Depp abused her, succeeded. The choose accepted that “Mr. Depp put her in fear of her life,” and shortly after Depp introduced that he had been requested to resign from the Fantastic Beasts franchise.

Because Depp sued the Sun, nonetheless, and never Heard, that verdict wasn’t grounds to dismiss Depp’s swimsuit towards Heard. It will go ahead in Virginia.

Evelyn Hockstein/AFP through Getty Images

Is this a case of “mutual abuse”? Or is it DARVO?

If there’s one factor that’s clear within the Depp-Heard case, it’s that not that a lot is obvious. This story is overwhelmingly messy and complex.

There is compelling proof that Depp acted violently in the direction of Heard. In the UK trial, Heard submitted witness testimony; contemporaneous textual content messages, emails, and diary entries; and images of her bruises. Taken collectively, they demonstrated a transparent sample of abuse, most frequently when Depp was underneath the affect of medication or alcohol. In order to pretend them, Heard would have needed to spend years plotting to besmirch Depp’s identify. (He claims she did.)

While the main points are too intensive to catalog exhaustively on this article, right here’s a quick overview of a few of the most mentioned incidents in query.

In June 2013, considered one of Heard’s shut feminine buddies hugged her. According to Heard, Depp, drunk and excessive on mushrooms, flew right into a rage, grabbed the girl’s wrists and threatened to harm her. He then allegedly trashed the cabin the place he and Heard have been staying, hit Heard, and threw glasses at her. Multiple witnesses agree that Depp actually obtained offended and trashed the cabin, and discovery additionally yielded contemporaneous texts between Depp and the actor Paul Bettany by which they fantasize collectively about burning Heard as a witch. “Let’s drown her before we burn her!!!” Depp texts at one level. “I will fuck her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead.”

In March 2015, whereas in Australia, Heard says that Depp spent three days on a violent tear, throughout which she says he repeatedly assaulted her. Both Heard and Depp agree that the tip of Depp’s finger was severed throughout this era (Depp says Heard threw a bottle at him and lower it off, whereas Heard says Depp lower it off himself from punching the wall and a plastic wall-mounted cellphone), and that he then used the injured finger to scrawl demeaning graffiti about Heard over a mirror and lampshade. Both Heard’s sister and her buddy Rocky Pennington testified that they noticed her coated in bruises and cuts shortly after the incident in query, and that Heard informed them then that Depp had attacked her. Texts present Depp’s workers agreeing to say they didn’t know the way he misplaced the tip of his finger.

“I accept that she [Heard] 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 can be compelling proof that Heard behaved violently towards Depp over the course of their relationship.

Depp has made public audio recordings of conversations he had with Heard over the course of their relationship. In the recordings, which have been first revealed by the Daily Mail shortly earlier than the UK trial in January 2020, Heard refers to hitting Depp. She says, “I’m sorry that I didn’t … hit you across the face in a proper slap, but I was hitting you, it was not punching you. Babe, you’re not punched. I don’t know what the motion of my actual hand was, but you’re fine, I did not hurt you, I did not punch you, I was hitting you.”

Depp responds that “I just couldn’t take the idea of more physicality, more physical abuse on each other,” warning Heard that “I’m scared to death we are a fucking crime scene right now.” Heard replies, “I can’t promise you I won’t get physical again. God, I fucking sometimes get so mad I lose it.”

In one other audio recording throughout a dialog in regards to the Australia incident, Heard seems to mock the concept that Depp would possibly place himself as a sufferer.

“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.”

In April 2022, Depp’s group introduced this recording on the trial in Fairfax throughout Depp’s testimony. Depp’s lawyer requested him how he responded when Heard proposed he inform the world he was a sufferer of home violence, and Depp replied, “I said, ‘Yes, I am.’”

Depp’s group additionally leaned on the distinction between Depp’s reported historical past and Heard’s. While Depp has beforehand been accused of property injury and verbal threats, he’s by no means earlier than been accused of the type of violence Heard describes in her account, which earlier girlfriends have described as uncharacteristic of him. Heard, nonetheless, does have some minor accusations of violence to account for.

In 2009, Heard obtained into an argument at an airport together with her then-girlfriend Tasya van Ree. Police arrested Heard after she allegedly struck van Ree’s arm, however costs have been by no means pressed. Van Ree has launched a press release sticking by Heard, saying the incident was blown out of proportion and and chalking it as much as what she describes because the cops’ misogyny and homophobia.

And Heard’s former assistant, Kate James, testified in courtroom this April that when she requested Heard for a pay elevate, Heard spat in her face.

Depp additionally argued that Heard hasn’t really donated her full divorce settlement to charity as she mentioned she would. (I informed you that one would come again!) While Heard promised to provide the ACLU $3.5 million, the ACLU has confirmed that she solely donated $1.3 million, and that it believes no less than $500,000 of that cash got here from Elon Musk, whom Heard briefly dated after her divorce from Depp. Depp’s group appears to be attempting to indicate right here that Heard does really want some cash, and that perhaps that was her motive all alongside for going after Depp.

So what will we do with these two competing narratives?

On April 14, Depp’s group referred to as marriage counselor Laurel Anderson to the stand on the Fairfax trial. Anderson, who recommended Depp and Heard throughout their marriage, mentioned she thought-about their dynamic to be considered one of “mutual abuse.”

Anderson testified that she noticed Heard bruised after altercations with Depp, and that Heard informed her she had initiated bodily fights with Depp on a number of events. She mentioned she believed, however was not sure, that Depp had additionally initiated bodily fights with Heard. Both Depp and Heard have mentioned that they skilled bodily abuse as kids, and Anderson’s concept is that their relationship pushed them again into poisonous childhood patterns, with every abusing the opposite and neither one in the end extra accountable than the opposite.

However, home violence consultants describe the idea of “mutual abuse” as divisive.

“I don’t believe in mutual abuse. I don’t believe that two parties decide to meet in the kitchen and box it out,” Ruth Glenn, president and CEO of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, informed NBC News. Glenn argues that each altercation between two individuals has a “primary aggressor,” and that if the opposite celebration hits again in self-defense, that doesn’t rely as mutual abuse.

Another idea from home violence analysis that will show extra helpful to our understanding of this case known as DARVO.

“DARVO refers to a reaction perpetrators of wrong doing, particularly sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior,” writes Jennifer J. Freyd, a professor emeritus of psychology on the University of Oregon. “DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. The perpetrator or offender may Deny the behavior, Attack the individual doing the confronting, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender such that the perpetrator assumes the victim role and turns the true victim — or the whistle blower — into an alleged offender.”

In this case, each Depp and Heard declare that they’re being falsely smeared as an abuser by the true abuser. If considered one of them is telling the reality, the opposite could also be participating in DARVO. But which one?

That might not be a query that may be answered to the satisfaction of a legal courtroom, past a shadow of a doubt. But right here’s what we do know.

Johnny Depp is 23 years older than Amber Heard, exponentially extra well-known, and for many of their relationship was a lot richer than she was. (Neither considered one of them appears to have all that a lot liquid money proper now.) Of the 2 of them, he was the one within the place to wield energy. And within the UK, the place this can be very tough to show a case like this, a courtroom has already discovered that Depp was almost definitely the perpetrator and aggressor.

So if all that’s the case, then why did the jury decide suggesting that Depp is a sufferer and Heard is an abuser? And why accomplish that many individuals on-line appear to agree?

Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images

Why does it appear to be so many individuals on-line are rooting for Johnny Depp?

The sheer quantity of on-line help for Depp has develop into one of many greatest oddities of this case. On Reddit, Twitter, and TikTook, persons are loudly declaring their help for Depp and their surety that Heard is a liar.

“Posters on Twitter and TikTok have overwhelmingly backed Depp, with hashtags like ‘JusticeForJohnnyDepp’ racking up nearly 3 billion views on TikTok. Similar hashtags have been tweeted thousands of times,” reported NBC News because the trial started.

“Why does it seem like the entire internet is Team Johnny Depp?” requested Vice, citing memes that check with Heard as a “liar,” a “gold digger,” and “Amber Turd,” in addition to a viral TikTook that addresses Heard with the road, “He could have killed you, he had every right.”

“To read the posts, you’d think Heard was on trial for a slew of violent crimes against Depp, not being sued over a newspaper column,” says Mel journal.

Part of all this fury may be attributed to Depp’s and Heard’s respective positions inside some distinctively poisonous web subgroups. In his publication, tech journalist Ryan Broderick put collectively a simple abstract of the overlap. “Basically a lot of boring men think Johnny Depp is cool, [Zack] Snyder fans think Amber Heard’s issues with Depp have impacted the release of DC movies, Harry Potter adults are mad that Depp was removed from the Fantastic Beasts franchise after he was accused of domestic violence, and a lot of TERFs viciously defend anything online about Harry Potter because of J.K. Rowling’s increasingly public transphobia,” Broderick wrote.

There’s additionally some proof that Depp’s group has used social media bots up to now to gin up outrage towards Heard. In 2020, Heard’s group commissioned a report from Bot Sentinel, a gaggle that makes use of synthetic intelligence to detect troll bots. It discovered a number of Twitter accounts that it thought-about doubtful, together with one which posted, “Fire her from all her rolls blacklist this crazy liar,” and one other that mentioned, “I am starting a petition. To get Amber Heard blacklisted from Hollywood!”

The report doesn’t imply that each Johnny Depp supporter on the web is definitely a robotic. But it does counsel that Depp’s group has a historical past of strategically amplifying the dialog about him to make it seem that public opinion is extra united on his facet than it really is.

And they’re not alone. Plenty of conservative retailers appear to have determined that the Depp-Heard story was good for his or her model, and to have devoted appreciable sources to selling it. A current Vice report discovered that the Daily Wire spent tens of tens of millions of {dollars} selling advertisements and movies with a bias towards Heard.

Depp has additionally develop into an emblem of types for many who need to have a dialog about male victims of home violence, each in good religion and in unhealthy.

On Twitter, earnest posts about Depp abound with the hashtag #BelieveMaleVictims. The National Domestic Violence Hotline estimates that one in seven grownup males within the US has been the sufferer of intimate accomplice violence, however says that males are much less seemingly than ladies to report their abuse or hunt down assist. Supporters of Depp argue that his willingness to determine as a sufferer of home violence is a strong gesture in the direction of breaking that stigma.

“One can only hope that public attention surrounding the Depp trial will impart the importance of protecting oneself and believing male victims, too,” says the Washington Examiner.

Meanwhile, Mel journal experiences that within the so-called manosphere the place males’s rights activists expound on the evils of feminism, Depp has develop into a hero. “His trial fits neatly into a tapestry of claims that men are under attack, woven alongside clumsy narratives about false rape accusations and mothers lying to block children from their fathers,” Mel says, citing feedback by which Depp supporters bemoan our tradition’s “disproportional focus on female ‘suffering’” and name for the destruction of “the believe all women with no evidence narrative.”

Here, the anomaly of this case is actually providing cowl for a Me Too backlash. For those that really feel that the Me Too motion went too far, siding with Depp over Heard turns into an opportunity to place their opposition to the motion as a principled help for male abuse victims reasonably than a reactionary misogynistic fury.

It’s additionally value noting that Depp is the one true A-list intercourse image to face the wrath of Me Too. While many very well-known and beloved males have been accused of doing terrible issues to ladies in 2017 and 2018, Depp was the one one who’s each a three-time Oscar nominee and a two-time People’s Sexiest Man Alive.

The tradition has spent many years admiring Depp’s expertise and wonder and charisma, and all of that admiration doesn’t simply go away now. Depp’s followers have made a strong emotional funding in him, and lots of of them are prepared to leap on any little second of ambiguity on this case as proof of Depp’s innocence. In a trial this messy, there are numerous ambiguities.

In the tip, maybe that’s what’s most damning in regards to the bigger dialog round this trial: the lack to deal with the ambiguities. Faced with a portrait of a relationship by which there’s compelling proof of violence and poisonous habits on each side, our tradition appears unable to simply accept that we could merely be taking a look at a narrative with out heroes. Instead, we demand a tidy narrative with a heroic redemption arc — and if the hero is a beloved, charismatic, and highly effective white man, nicely, all the higher.

It’s tough to see Depp’s repute absolutely recovering from his current string of lawsuits. Even after Heard accused him of home abuse, Hollywood had loads of cowl to proceed enterprise as traditional, because it labored with Depp up till he dragged the struggle into the courtroom. He wasn’t fired from Fantastic Beasts, in spite of everything, till he misplaced his UK case. It’s not clear whether or not a win within the US courtroom system will absolutely redeem his repute. And Heard, who has much less of a longtime repute to guard her, is probably at much more threat.

If this case proved one factor, nonetheless, it’s that Johnny Depp remains to be a star, and he’s nonetheless able to commanding the nation’s consideration. And for a film star whose mild is fading quick, perhaps that’s sufficient.

Correction, June 1, 9:40 pm: A earlier model of this text misstated the quantity Johnny Depp was awarded within the verdict. It was $15 million. That contains $5 million in punitive damages, which was capped to $350,000 per Virginia regulation.

Update, June 1, 4 pm: This article was initially revealed on May 4, 2020. It has been up to date with the jury’s verdict.

Update, November 3, 5 pm: This article has been up to date with Depp’s attraction.