The texts became public
as part of Depp’s defamation suit against Heard, now at trial in a Virginia
court. Ostensibly, Depp is suing over a 2018 article that Heard published in
the Washington Post, titled “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our
culture’s wrath.” In the piece, the actress writes, “Two years ago, I became a
public figure representing domestic abuse.” The article does not mention Depp,
but his lawyers say that the piece was about him – and was defamatory. For
those 11 words, Depp sought $50m.
A jury thought he
deserved $15m. On Wednesday, the case’s verdict came in, finding that Heard
defamed Depp, acting with “malice,” when she described herself as a victim of
domestic abuse. Bizarrely, the same jury found that one of Depp’s lawyer’s
defamed Heard when he accused her of staging a “hoax” scene of abuse to which
police were called at the couple’s home. The verdict came after a trial that
was televized – an extremely rare situation for a proceeding that concerns
allegations of domestic violence – and which was subject to almost inescapable
media coverage, nearly all of it in favor of one litigant, even as the jury was
not sequestered. The strange, illogical, and unjust ruling has the effect of
sanctioning Depp’s alleged abuse of Heard, and of punishing Heard for speaking
about it. It will have a devastating effect on survivors, who will be silenced,
now, with the knowledge that they cannot speak about their violent experiences
at men’s hands without the threat of a ruinous libel suit. In that sense,
women’s speech just became a lot less free.
Over the past six weeks,
as the trial was live-streamed online, many of those who have tuned in to watch
have treated Heard with the same contempt that Depp did in his texts. A broad
consensus has emerged online that Heard must be lying about her abuse. She has
been accused of faking the photos of her injuries from Depp’s alleged beatings,
painting bruises on with makeup. She’s been accused of convincing the multiple
witnesses who say Depp abused her to lie – repeatedly and under oath – for
years. These conspiracy theories are unsupported by the facts of the case, but
that has not stopped them from spreading. Online, the case has taken on a heady
mythology, and belief in Depp’s righteousness persists independent of the
evidence.
In the service of this
myth, any cruelty can be justified. When Heard took the stand, she became
emotional as she recounted how Depp allegedly hit her, manipulated and
controlled her, surveilled her and sexually assaulted her. Afterwards, ordinary
people, along with a few celebrities and even brands like Duolingo and Milani,
took to social media to mock or undermine Heard. They took screenshots of her
weeping face and made it a meme. Many performed mocking re-enactments of her
testimony, lip-syncing along as she recounted the alleged abuse. The audio of
her crying became a TikTok trend. This cruelty has now been joined in and
compounded by the jury, who have gone beyond mocking her for telling her story,
and now declared that she actually broke the law by doing so.
This is not the first
time Depp has sued over the allegations. In 2020, a British court heard Depp’s
lawsuit against the British tabloid the Sun, which Depp sued for defamation
after an article referred to him as a “wife beater”. UK courts are much more
amenable to defamation claims than American ones, but Depp still couldn’t
prevail: the British judge found that the Sun’s characterization of Depp was
“substantially true”. That same trial found that Depp physically abused Heard
on at least 12 occasions. Yet the actor and his fans claim that it was Heard,
not Depp, who was the abuser in their marriage.
The trial has turned
into a public orgy of misogyny. While most of the vitriol is nominally directed
at Heard, it is hard to shake the feeling that really, it is directed at all
women – and in particular, at those of us who spoke out about gendered abuse
and sexual violence during the height of the #MeToo movement. We are in a
moment of virulent antifeminist backlash, and the modest gains that were made
in that era are being retracted with a gleeful display of victim-blaming at a
massive scale. One woman has been made into a symbol of a movement that many
view with fear and hatred, and she’s being punished for that movement. In this
way, Heard is still in an abusive relationship. But now, it’s not just with
Depp, but with the whole country.
Since she published her
Post piece, Heard’s life has been consumed by the rage and retaliation of Depp
and his fans. Lost in the scandal and spectacle of the lawsuit has been this
reality: it is Heard, not Depp, who has been put on trial, and she is on trial
for saying things whose truth is evidenced by the very fact of the lawsuit
itself. Depp’s frivolous and punitive suit, and the frenzy of misogynist
contempt for Heard that has accompanied it, have done a great deal to vindicate
Heard’s original point: that women are punished for coming forward. What
happens to women who allege abuse? They get publicly pilloried, professionally
blacklisted, socially ostracized, mocked endlessly on social media and sued.
Wrath, indeed.
But mainstream coverage
of the trial has not seemed to grasp this. Instead, there’s been tremendous
focus on Heard’s mistakes and worst moments over the course of her relationship
with Depp. As is typical of domestic abuse victims, Heard does seem to have
done things many of us would not be proud of. She fought back. Depp’s outbursts
and insults left Heard resentful and angry with him, and sometimes, she told
him so. Many are quick to point out that Heard is not a perfect victim. But no
woman is. We are told that the lawsuit is “complicated.” But the lawsuit is not
complicated. It is abuse. Now, that abuse has been sanctioned by a jury.
Maybe the persistence of
this notion that Heard is somehow equally culpable for what happened to her is
why people like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg have characterized the
trial as “the death of Me Too”: it shows how easily a victim can still be
blamed and isolated, how easily what happened to her can be taken as a failure
of her personal character, rather than as part of a social pattern. Not all
women are alike, but feminism was supposed to let us see how we are all
similarly vulnerable – both to gendered abuse and to the gendered application
of double standards and unjust blame. No victim is perfect. No victim should
have to be. After all, if a man cannot be considered abusive towards an
imperfect woman, then just how perfect does a woman need to be before it
becomes wrong to beat her?
For their part, Depp’s
fans seem to not so much deny Depp’s alleged violence against Heard, but to
approve of it. “He could have killed you,” says one viral Tiktok supporting
Depp, the text superimposed over photos of Heard’s bruised face. “He had every
right.” The post has more than 222,200 likes.
The backlash to #Me Too
has long been under way. Critics of the movement painted women’s efforts to end
sexual violence as excessive and intemperate from the start, claiming #MeToo
had “gone too far” before it really got under way at all. And yet the Heard
trial does feel like a tipping point in our culture’s response to gender
violence. The forces of misogynist reaction are perhaps even stronger now for
having been temporarily repressed. Where once women refused, en masse, to keep
men’s secrets, or to remain silent about the truth of their own lives, now, a
resurgence of sexism, virulent online harassment, and the threat of lawsuits,
all aim to compel women back into silence – by force.
In some ways, one could
see the defamation suit itself as an extension of Depp’s abuse of Heard, a way
to prolong his humiliation and control over her. The only difference is that
now, the legal system and the public have been conscripted to take part. This
seems to be at least partly how Depp sees it. In 2016, as their marriage broke
apart, Depp texted his friend Christian Carino, vowing revenge against Heard.
“She is begging for global humiliation,” Depp wrote. “She is going to get it.”
Moira Donegan is a
Guardian US columnist
This article was amended
on 3 June 2022 to specify the defamation count on which the jury ruled for
Amber Heard, and to give the sum awarded to Johnny Depp by the jury as $15m
(later reduced by the judge to $10.35m, as the punitive-damages element exceeded
Virginia’s state limit.)
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