“Tell the world Johnny. Tell them Johnny Depp, I, Johnny Depp, a man, I’m a victim too of domestic violence and I know it’s a fair fight, and see how many people believe or side with you.”
– Amber Heard.
I never thought I would really get this in depth in terms of watching a case, especially one that was a celebrity against a celebrity. Yes that’s difficult to write considering the degrees of celebrity, but she is, so truth it is. I recall when this all first started very clearly too. As you all know I have my guild in WoW, well when this became an issue in 2018 I had a disagreement with another guild member in regards to it. They were very strongly on the side of believe all women, which for the record I do believe women, so that’s not an issue. My issue with this particular person was that I said I fully believed they both probably did shit and it was not one sided. They disagreed greatly and my response was quite simply what all have you ever heard from anyone else that is “bad” about Johnny? They had no response and it kind of stopped there.
Circle back to now and like a lot of people I found myself following this case pretty damn close. Not even necessarily siding with one or the other initially. I chose, like the lawyer who was streaming it, to keep an open mind and hear the evidence. Make my mind up on what I would think or do if I were on the jury hearing only the evidence presented. It did not take very long to see that one side had a lot of talk and little to back it up and the other had a lot of talk and way more credibility. I was not surprised to hear and see that they both were at fault for things, there were problems across the board, but one seemed to be more motivated to benefit from it than the other. That’s when the tide turned for me. I started to pay very close attention to what was said and shown. Did the words match the evidence? They did not on an awful lot of items. In the end I felt like Johnny won, whether he won the case or not, because the goal was to show that he was not this monstrous evil being that she had painted him as.
Now I know this case has definitely pulled on #MeToo strings and rightly so. The #MeToo movement is and was a very important thing that needed to happen and still does. I fully support that. In the midst of it’s earliest moments it was a lot of bad men, and I mean really bad men who got brought into focus. They should have and obviously we have seen how that has played out for those men. They are getting what they deserve. As I said I fully support the movement and all that it stands for. What I, and I would assume a lot of us did not think about when it started was what if the shoe was on the other foot? Domestic abuse/Sexual Assault (we will stick to those two for now since that is what this applies to) is not just a thing one side does. It can be either party, yes we hear a lot less of it happening that way, but if #MeToo proved anything it’s that just because you are not hearing about it, does not mean it is not happening right?
In this case I would say they were both at fault for things going the way they did. I will never say Johnny was an angel or perfect, far from it. I will also say that after everything I heard and saw he was clear on accepting his responsibility for his issues, what they caused, what happened, how he tried to deal with it. Perfect, no. I then look at Amber’s side of things, and while I’ve seen some bruises, that is really all I’ve seen. I’ve heard her berate him endlessly, follow from room to room based on his and her own words and from others. I’m gonna be honest for me, sometimes when shit gets way out of hand, I too would like to just step aside for a little while, clear my head, let the dust settle a little and then we can figure it out. We all handle that differently so I expect opinions to vary on that and that’s okay. We do not have to agree or do everything the same way.
So getting back to some of the evidence and witnesses, and I will not take this too far or too long because lord knows after six weeks there’s a ton I could go over. We will not be doing that haha. Instead I am going to focus on the things that stood out to me in their existence or lack there of. The videos and recordings, we will handle them all in a grouping because it’s just easier. Those videos and recordings showed two people who very clearly are not in a good place. I know they were encouraged to record things by their therapist to try and help work out their issues. Johnny says plenty of shit, Amber says plenty of shit. Words are thrown around and neither of them look good at all from them. There are some key points that stood out to me that helped influence my thoughts on this specifically though. One being on recordings, now I could be wrong but the admission of physical violence was from Amber. “I didn’t punch you. I’m sorry I didn’t hit you across the face in a proper slap. I was hitting you, it was not punching you.” I do not recall Johnny ever saying he hit her, there was the headbutt comment, which Johnny said was him holding her to control the physicality. Whether or not that is true I do not know.
The one video (the Cabinets video) that was clearly recorded without Johnny’s knowledge definitely raised some eyebrows, especially mine. You can very clearly see he is upset, what about they do not really get into, but he is definitely upset. Cabinets are hit, items are thrown, it’s not a nice situation. Now Amber is not assaulted on this video. She does get some less than kind words and that iPad gets a good one when he realizes she’s recording this. Not a good look for Johnny either. My issue, well issues, are probably what a lot would raise. One, California is a two party state, meaning both parties have to give consent to be recorded. Johnny very clearly did not give consent to that recording based on the reaction we see. The other issue I have is at the end of it, you do not see a scared Amber, you see a smiling Amber. It was a “gotcha” moment and I do not think that is what you would see from someone who is as afraid as she claimed to be. Definitely stuck in my head like I’m not sure about that.
Then we have the recording of her telling Johnny to tell the world and see if they believe him. You pretty much shot yourself in the foot with that one. The tone and way she put it just sat wrong with me. It was like a yea sure go for it no one’s believing you over me statement. I don’t think in hindsight it worked out like she expected. There were a lot of claims of physical abuse but no matter how serious the description of any of it was, never once was their medical records to back those claims up. I cannot say whether or not they happened because I was not there, but I know for me personally, if those things had happened to me or someone else, I would think we most certainly would have sought medical attention for them. Lack of evidence is in itself evidence to a degree.
The photos, and this one is fun for me because we clearly know how to edit photos, so this one I can put my thoughts into. Before we do that though let’s see what I’m talking about first.
Alright so these are the two photos that I am going to talk about because as someone who takes photos and edits them this is easier for me to break down. If you have taken a photo before, and even Second Life has this issue, if you move, it is REALLY hard to get everything to line up exactly the same as it was before. In the real world we have the addition of your body moving constantly, hair moves, all of those things. These two images when you place one over the other line up identically. As people questioned it is clearly amped up with saturation to make the colors contrast more. You cannot convince me otherwise because I have seen this done and know how to do it. It takes a minimal amount of time. It was argued that it was it vanity lighting on one and regular lighting on the other. Sure maybe that would be the case if the shadows moved or anything in the photo moved but as you can see outside of color, nothing changes.
In the end the jury decided what they decided and I happen to agree with them. I think giving both something was the right call, but Johnny getting all three of his to her single win proved the point. Neither of them are angels or perfectly innocent, and I will never say they are. I think each side showed what they could and one had a much better showing than the other did. I find it interesting that the majority of Amber’s witnesses were depositions and they are at this point former friends of hers. One seemed credible to me, the rest were questionable. It was interesting to watch it as it went along and I truly kept myself impartial until the evidence led me to start believing one more than the other. I remained open to hearing both sides throughout but it started to become clear the more I heard. You might think otherwise and that’s okay.
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