In what is now the fourth week and fourteenth day of the controversial and highly public defamation case of Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard, the Aquaman actress has finally taken the stand to give her direct and cross-examination. She was the second witness on her side and it seems that her testimony is taking way less time than Johnny Depp’s a couple of weeks ago.
Heard came right after Dawn Hughes, a psychologist hired by Heard’s legal team, who after 29 hours of examining her, concluded that the actress suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder consequence of multiple acts of abuse, all perpetrated by Depp according to her testimony. Hughes’ testimony has been controversial since yesterday, the psychologist had been reading her testimony to what Depp’s legal team asked the judge to make her hand the notes. She’s also declared that although it’s true that Amber also perpetrated violence towards Depp, “it paled in comparison to the violence she suffered.”
After Hughes was done with her testimony, Heard’s team called the actress herself to the stand. She started by saying the whole process of the trial was really difficult for her and then jumped in to talk about the case between Johnny Depp and the British media outlet The Sun, where she had been a primary witness. Then her lawyer asked her to talk about her upbringing and her career to establish a comparison between the acting trajectories of Heard and Depp.
Right after this, she was asked about how she met Depp and how their relationship had started. At this point, both shared similar stories about how they had met before the shooting of the film Rum Diaries and how they had started dating during the press tour of the film in 2011. She expressed how despite the 22-year age gap, she felt an instant connection to the actor:
“I was a no-name actor. I was 22. He was twice my age. He’s this world-famous actor and here we are getting along about obscure books, old blues.”
Then she started narrating the first time Depp allegedly hit her. Though she didn’t clarify exactly when it happened she narrated the motif had been Depp’s infamous ‘Wino Forever’ tattoo. Heard said she was looking at it trying to read what it said and started laughing at the word ‘Wino.’ According to Heard, Depp slapped her on the face: “I just laughed because I thought he was joking, and [he] slapped me across the face.” She laughed again thinking he was still joking, and he allegedly hit her a third time, this time knocking her to the floor.
Depp has already denied this has ever happened claiming that “why would I take such great offense to someone making fun of a tattoo on my body? That allegation never made any sense to me.” Still, Heard sustains this happened, and that it had just been the beginning of years of physical and verbal abuse.
She explained that although rationally she knew that there was a no-return after this and that she had to leave him, there was something inside her that wouldn’t let her take that step: “I knew I couldn’t just forgive him, right, because that means it will happen again. Like, I’ve seen the health class videos.” Then, some days later, Depp came back to her to apologize and promise he would never do that again: “I wanted to believe him, so I chose to.”
Amber Heard kept narrating other moments in which Johnny Depp allegedly went physical with her. The Pirates of the Caribbean actor has denied all accusations claiming he has never hit a woman and that it was Heard the one who would constantly abuse him physically.
Amber Heard will continue her testimony in the upcoming days.
