Justice Overruled

Like so many other women who had been in abusive relationships, I spent all of May with AirPods in my ears, glued to the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial. Whichever side we started out believing, those of us who watched the whole thing wound up overwhelmingly convinced that Depp was telling the truth. I felt vindicated by his win; there was relief in seeing any abuser exposed and punished for lying about it. And then my most trusted news organizations denied what I had witnessed, dismissing all of us, jury included, as crazed Depp fans who would be held accountable for supposed damage to #MeToo. I’ll get to ‘why’ in a moment. Meanwhile, here is what you don’t know about the case unless you followed it yourself. With an appeal looming, maybe you will look at the next round of coverage with a different eye. Depp’s testimony rang true to me from the get-go. If you ever lived through this particular hell, the audio of their conversations was painfully familiar. Just the fact that Depp started recording their arguments — with Heard’s approval — so he could prove to her the following day that she’d said what she’d said, made me wince. I did the same, under the naïve assumption that proof would actually prove anything to a gaslighter. We listened to Heard acknowledge that she had thrown pots, pans, and cans at Depp, as well as initiated physical violence, and we also heard her downplay the significance of it all, as abusers do. “You didn’t get punched; you got hit,” she said during one fight. “…I did not fucking deck you… I don’t know what the motion of my actual hand was. But you’re fine. I did not hurt you. I did not punch you. I was hitting you.” When Depp said that he was a better judge of whether he’d been punched in the jaw, she ridiculed him as a whiner. “You’re a fucking baby. You are such a baby! Grow the fuck up, Johnny!”

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