The Mourning After
Via Getty Images.
It’s much, much worse than you think. The Depp-Heard trial should concern anyone who cares about domestic abuse and the experiences of vulnerable women in the public spotlight.
CW: domestic abuse
On Wednesday, June 1st, the world awoke to the final verdict of the Depp v. Heard lawsuit unfolding in Fairfax County, Virginia. For those blissfully out of the know, renowned actor Johnny Depp brought his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard, to court for alleged defamation. In 2018, Heard published an op-ed in the Washington Post in which she implied that Depp had abused her. While both parties were ordered to pay each other damages, the verdict was squarely on Depp’s side: Heard was found liable on three counts of defamation, while in Heard’s countersuit, Depp was found liable for one count of defamation through his attorney. Heard won $2 million in damages, while Depp was awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.
Depp’s defamation lawsuit hinged on three key statements Heard made in her op-ed, none of which mentioned the actor by name but were still interpreted as callouts of Depp:
“I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”
“Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.”
“I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.”
To prove that Heard had acted with actual malice (the legal standard for defamation), Depp’s legal team needed to prove that Heard knowingly, or with reckless disregard for the truth, sought to damage his reputation; as such, the spotlight of the trial quickly turned on whether Depp had abused Heard or not.
So this article could be a thorough analysis of the facts of the case. It could attempt to offer a defense of Amber Heard’s narrative: that she was, in fact, a victim of abuse (not that that would discount Depp from being a victim, too). It could discuss at length Depp’s documented history of drug and alcohol abuse, and that his substance problems played a role in his treatment of Heard. It could recount the litany of bodily horrors Heard endured. It could present into evidence threatening text messages that Depp exchanged with actor Paul Bettany, in which he viscerally described murdering and defiling Heard. Ultimately, it could then arrive at the conclusion that a deeply intimate trial should never have been made into a public spectacle in the first place. But none of that would matter when public opinion is so fervently for Depp and relentlessly against Heard. So instead, this article is about the backlash against Heard. Heard’s real-time character assassination isn’t just about her: there’s an insipid undercurrent of political heat behind Depp’s victory that’s bubbling over into full-scale crisis for women and victims of abuse.
Regardless of what one’s feelings about Amber Heard are—manipulative abuser, innocent victim, or something in between—there’s no denying that her multi-year legal saga in the public spotlight has irreparably shattered her reputation, perhaps forever. Heard herself described the fear of being “blacklisted” and losing acting opportunities from her op-ed heard around the world, which is to say nothing of the public backlash that has exploded against her of late. The House Judiciary Republicans Twitter account posted a GIF of Depp in his iconic Pirates of the Caribbean role. Heard was awash in death threats that poured in from all corners of the world. Pro-Depp and anti-Heard hashtags, from the self-serious #JusticeForJohnnyDepp to the juvenile #AmberTurd, populated Twitter and TikTok.
But beyond the veneer of isolated backlash against Amber Heard, there is a dark reality for all abuse victims. British psychologists noted that after witnessing Heard’s operatic vilification, domestic abuse victims currently in court against their partners are considering retracting their cases. “They realize that if that could happen to a millionaire actress with a legal team, anything could happen to them as just normal women trying to navigate a court process,” said Dr. Jessica Taylor in The Independent. The safety of abuse victims is being further marginalized in environments where abusers already wield outsized power over their victims by forcing them to relive past traumas for the legal system. Victims watch Amber Heard’s crucifixion on TikTok and the evening news, become triggered by the thought that their own traumatic experiences could be trivialized and discredited, and ultimately go to sleep feeling less safe than the night before.
“Over and over again, the most intimate, embarrassing, deeply humiliating and personal things that I have survived are used against me every day…it’s torture.”
Amber Heard in cross-examination, May 16th, 2022
But of course, Depp’s supporters are quick to argue that they couldn’t possibly be making life more dangerous for victims: after all, wasn’t Depp a victim of abuse in his own right? Wouldn’t his victory actually embolden other victims to pursue justice? Isn’t Depp’s victory a win for the Me Too movement? It’s not so simple. Yes, Heard was indeed an abusive partner who verbally berated Depp on multiple occasions and physically assaulted him. But to leave it at that, or even at the more charitable label of mutual abuse, is disingenuous because it fails to acknowledge the skewed power dynamics of the Depp-Heard relationship. Depp was a 46-year-old Hollywood legend. Heard was a 22-year old hired by Depp for a role in his movie. Depp was infinitely wealthier and more recognizable than Heard, who had only just achieved some degree of mainstream recognition with her roles in Never Back Down and Pineapple Express. Depp held clear, undeniable power over Heard. In the event that Heard did abuse Depp, it was as a victim lashing out against the unmistakable trauma she endured. “Victims do not have to be perfect in order to deserve justice,” wrote journalist Constance Grady in Vox. She said it better than I ever could have: “Depp’s victory is not an expansion of the gains of Me Too. It is a cynical appropriation of the rhetoric of Me Too, applied now to its end.” In other words, Me Too is dead, and Johnny Depp killed it.
And it wasn’t a surprise that Republican politicians from Matt Gaetz (currently being investigated for sex trafficking an underage girl) to Donald Trump Jr. (son to a serial harasser) were so enthusiastically in support of Johnny Depp. Conservatives have been weaponizing the Depp trial for all it’s worth; in one such example, right-wing media outlet The Daily Wire spent up to $47,000 on social media ads for content blasting Heard. For an outside observer, or a plucky liberal seized up by a genuine belief in Depp’s side of the story with a desire to support victims, this might seem bizarre. But it isn’t. Discrediting a high-profile woman is just par for the course in the conservative war against women: demonizing the Me Too movement, shielding powerful men from accusations of abuse and misconduct (see: Gaetz, Trump, and Fox News’ erstwhile Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly), and gutting access to abortion. This isn’t the first time conservatives have tried to shame victims of harassment and abuse into silence, after all. Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh come to mind. But what sets the Heard trial apart is that it coincides with a massive legal pushback against women’s rights, namely the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade, the law of the land for almost 50 years. Conservatives are frothing at the mouth at the chance to almost permanently set back women’s rights another 50 years. We can’t let it happen, either to abortion rights or protections for domestic abuse victims.
In 10 years, how will we remember Amber Heard? Will we still carry on with our bitter tirades, or—far likelier—will she enter the pantheon of disgraced-then-rehabilitated women taken advantage of by men in power? The names of Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky, Britney Spears, and Christine Blasey Ford are already etched in stone as cautionary tales against taking the side of men in power. Whether Amber Heard will be next is up to us.