I’m seeing a lot of people either misunderstanding the verdict or misrepresenting it as “the jury beleived she was abused but decided she shouldn’t/couldn’t talk about it” when that simply isn’t the case. Because of this, I’ve put this together to summarize what the verdict actually was and what it meant:
On Johnny Depp’s Claims:
Claim 1- “I spoke up against sexual violence-and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.” - Verdict:DEFAMATION
Claim 2- “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.” - Verdict: DEFAMATION
Claim 3- “I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” - Verdict: DEFAMATION
Awarded Damages
Summative (Damages for harm rendered by statements) - $10 Million Dollars
Punative (punishment or “we just don’t like you Amber” damages) - $350,000 Dollars (the cap for Virginia, they attempted 5 million dollars)
On Amber Heard’s Claims:
Claim 1 - “Amber Heard and her friends in the media used fake sexual violence allegations as aboth a sword and a sheild, depending on their needs. They have selected some of her sexual violence hoax ‘facts’ as the sword, inflicting them on the public and Mr.Depp.” - Verdict: NOT DEFAMATION
Claim 2 - “Quite simply this was an ambush, a hoax. They set Mr. Depp up by calling the cops but the first attempt didn’t do the trick. The officers came to the penthouse, throughly searched and interveiwed, and left after seeing no damage to face or property. So Amber and her friends spilt a little wine and roughed the place up, got their stories stright under the direction of a lawyer and publicist, and then placed a second call to 911.” - Verdict: DEFAMATION
Claim 3 - “[W]e have reached the begining of the end of Ms. Heard’s abuse hoax against Johnny Depp.”Verdict:NOT DEFAMATION
Awarded Damages:
Summative (Damages for harm rendered by statements) - $2 Million Dollars
Punative (punishment or “we just don’t like you Johnny” damages) - $0
Summary of what this means:
What this means is that the jury not only did not beleive that Amber Heard was abused, but beleived that she did start a malicious abuse hoax camapaign against him. We can see that because they ruled all of Johnny’s Claims as defamation and and the first and thrid claim, which talk generally about Amber Heard starting an abuse hoax, as NOT defamation.
However, it seems they either didn’t beleive, or didn’t beleive that it was proved by better weight of the evidence that Amber and her friends roughed up the apartment specifically. So what they didn’t beleive was the more specific claim, not the general ideas.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN THEY RULED SHE WAS ABUSED BUT SHE’S JUST NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT IT. THIS MEANS THEY RULED SHE WASN’T ABUSED AND WAS LYING ABOUT IT MALICIOUSLY IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEFAME JOHNNY DEPP.
johnny depp stans will make weird youtube videos about him laughing and ‘owning’ amber’s legal team, ship him with his weird ass lawyer, and on top of that do everything they can to make misogynistic comments towards amber…. and then say they are doing so in support of male victims of dv. get help.
fantastic precedent that this case will be to shut up all victims of DV ever and continually discredit women.
you know what other precedent this should set?
ladies, you’re going to be prosecuted for being abused anyway. make it worth it and kill him regardless.
You have irrefutable proof? Why? You must have set him up.
You don’t have proof? Of course. You’re a liar
You fought back? A real victim would never.
You didn’t fight? Why not? A real victim would.
He was high/drunk? He’s troubled. You should have helped him. He’s the real victim.
You were drunk/high? You are unreliable and have a problem.
He has a history of violence? That’s different. It’s your fault for not helping him and provoking him. You made him this way and he took it out on others.
You’re mentally ill? You’re unreliable. You’re the problem.
He’s mentally ill? You should have helped more. It’s not his fault. He didn’t mean to.
He admitted to being abusive? Well that’s just how guys are. It’s not a big deal. Besides, it takes two to tango.
We literally watched all of that play out in real time. Proof doesn’t matter when you have a society who idolizes, infantilizes and enables men and demonizes women. Logical and proof doesn’t matter anymore. It’s a popularity contest.
Amber Heard had more evidence supporting her claims than most abuse victims have and yet that jury decided she defamed that man. I’m truly angry and disgusted. This has been a major setback for women and abuse victims.
As a verdict is possibly hours away, a sense of dread has been building in my stomach for what it will mean for Amber’s future, as well as all victims of intimate partner violence (IPV), particularly as women’s basic rights continue to be under attack in the United States. Like many people who are following the case, I have personal experiences with abuse. Much of my research focuses on IPV, specifically, the disparities in resources and services that are available for survivors to leave their abusers, such as economic, social, geographical barriers. It’s a topic which is deeply tied to my own personal experiences and academic career.
I initially was ambivalent to Amber Heard. Before I began to research the case, I was firmly in the “they both suck” camp, having only briefly glanced through articles. I started to pay more attention to the media coverage over the past six weeks and was really staggered by how Heard was being portrayed as a lying, crazy, gold-digging woman through narratives that were not only going unchallenged, but were heavily perpetuated in the public discourse. Even worse, that the abuse she experienced had been capitalized on by “true crime” junkies and mocked in TikTok videos and Youtube compilations. So I began watching the trial live and found that there was far more evidence and far more substantial evidence which shows that JD was the perpetrator of abuse within their relationship.
Is she guilty of fighting back? Absolutely. Shenever liedabout doing so, even dating back to her 2016 deposition. However, fighting back against a man who has beaten you, sexually assaulted you, controlled your career, finances, and who you can associate with does not equate to being an abuser. It’s simply surviving. And yes, I’ve heard those audio tapes, the in which she’s expresses her incredulity at him for stating their fights were fair when she feared he would kill her.
His case has relied upon deeply misogynistic narratives to discredit both her claims and her character. She was after his money all along, even though she refused the 30 million dollar fortune she was legally entitled to, as there was no prenup. She painted on bruises, even though a makeup artist testified to covering up her swollen lip and two black eyes. She cut off his finger, even though multiple texts and even an audio recording showcase him admitting to doing it in the midst of a bender. She didn’t donate her money, even though she and the organization created a 10 year plan for her to make yearly payments (in my personal opinion, what she does with her money either way is nobody’s fucking business). Also worth noting, an ACLU representative testified to her being ahead of schedule until Depp began suing her. She made up a hoax, because she documented her abuse - as we advise all people who are in abusive situations to do. She’s a liar, because women are inherently deceitful liars.
I don’t know whether Amber Heard will win her case. We’re witnessing a radical right-wing political swing to control and criminalize women’s bodies with Roe v. Wade under attack right now. To be blunt, I have very little faith in the justice system and that a jury - in Virginia of all places - will rule in favour of an abused woman over her charismatic, powerful ex-husband. However, I think it’s important to remember that Amber did everything right, that is, everything we tell women to do. She documented her abuse, left her abusive partner, and was granted a restraining order - and she’s continuing to be punished for doing so. If Amber, a privileged white woman with access to economic resources, is still struggling to escape her abuser, how can we expect women without those privileges to?
I have got to say, it’s nice not to be bombarded with pro Depp Youtube videos and pro Depp trends on Twitter. It also makes it very obvious that he was buying that support because the absence of his bots is very loud. I’m seeing way more support for Amber now than ever before (including when the allegations against him became public).
His stans are very agitated because they actually bought into the artificial hype. Now it’s just them harassing Amber and her supporters and they look stupid without the thousands of bots Depp used during the trial.
And still, the vast majority of participants in the zeitgeist purport to be defending victims even as they take part in Heard’s mass victimization. Even those who consider themselves progressive feminists insist that Amber Heard has no place in the movement against domestic violence. In the process, they’re crafting a blind, toothless framework for understanding abuse that will end up failing each and every woman who needs it.
…through it all, they still honestly insist that they’re on the side of all victims everywhere, despite the fact that most victims of abuse are made to look a lot more like Amber Heard than anyone wants to admit.
So if you’re one of the many people saying that you “believe victims, just not Amber Heard” — that you don’t think all women are psycho bitch liars, just Amber Heard — I sincerely regret to inform you that you are lying to yourself and others. Here’s the long and the short of it: if you can take an honest look at the evidence in front of you and not believe that Amber Heard is a victim of abuse, there are exceptionally few women who you actually would believe if they were to receive the same treatment.
Johnny Depp has created a new playbook for getting away with murder — which is to say he’s used the oldest playbook in the world to appeal to our cultural fear of a crazy, manipulative psycho bitch and craft a narrative in which it’s okay to beat her. It’s a playbook every man in Hollywood is preparing to adopt to get back at the women they’ve abused. It’s a playbook that will trickle down to the masses — if you’re a woman, it’s a playbook that may be used against you, if it hasn’t been already. If you’ve ever raised your voice, retaliated with cruelty, lost yourself in the depths of an unspeakably cruel and mind-twisting relationship, or, god forbid, hit back, this spectacle has proven that you, too, can be dehumanized within an inch of your life until the question is almost no longer whether or not you’ve been hurt, but whether or not you were insane enough to deserve it. Once the conversation gets to this point, by the way, the answer will always be yes.
So a few days ago, Amber Heard did an interview where she spoke about how the way she was being treated was unfair and that the jury was influenced by social media. Now a juror spoke out and just proved her point. The juror complained about Amber maintaining eye contact with them and crying while describing her sexual assault. The juror also said that Amber was lying but at the same time there was mutual abuse (a concept that does not exist. Reactive violence is not abuse). This is what determined the outcome of the case, not the evidence or the testimonies. The jury (who were asleep some of the time) made their choice based on likeability and demeanor. Amber got understandably emotional at times and apparently, that damned her in the eyes of the jury.
So she is apparently both a psychopath cause she doesn’t smile/show emotions all the time, but when she does show emotions while describing being sexually assaulted it is also wrong? Make it make sense. It was a trial by vibes because it is an absolutely senseless assessment.
They simultaneously disbelieve her experience and wish her to go through more abuse to be considered a victim. The more time passes after the trial, the more evident it becomes just how absurd and cruel and vile it was.
Women go through so much shame about being abused, feel terrifyingly bad about expressing their feelings about it and when they do, it gets picked apart by click chasers and fanatics. We all know you have critical thinking skills, you are not little children who are being fed the hateful content. You are the ones making it. If it was really about victim advocacy you would tear jd apart for grooming minors, being violent and aggressive, abusing people and endangering his own daughter and his previous partners. Denying his ongoing history of abuse is not the intellectual take you think it is. You willingly participate in misogynistic extremism and you absolutely deserve to be called out for it. You radicalise your own society for the sake of clicks and when something will happen to you, your girlfriends, sisters, daughters don’t make tweets about how “we overlooked it” and “let it happen”, or how “feminism became toothless”. Don’t forget that you used your teeth to bite yourself in the ass you armchair terrorists.
This is who this case was for. This is who wanted Johnny Depp to win. This case is pop culture’s answer to qanon. I never want to hear anyone ask how Trump got elected ever again. I never want to hear anyone laugh at the absurdity of conspiracy theories permeating our government organizations. I never want to hear anyone deny the fact that this case was rooted in anything but violent vitriol and misogyny and a deep global hatred for women. I have been repeating myself for years, but this case never had anything to do with “protecting victims”. This case was about humiliating, silencing, and abusing women so that it would be easier to strip us of our rights and (bodily) autonomy. You stupid fucks will sit here and twiddle your thumbs and peddle blatantly false made-up lies (“but she shit in his bed! #AmberTurd”) because your Twitter Tik Tok YouTube Reddit rotted pea-brains are barren and unable to perform basic functions like reading let alone critical thinking.
Amber Heard had more evidence supporting her claims than most abuse victims have and yet that jury decided she defamed that man. I’m truly angry and disgusted. This has been a major setback for women and abuse victims.
