Unless you’ve been living under a rock you know that actor Johnny Depp recently won a defamation lawsuit against his ex wife Amber Heard. This was a big deal for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that Johnny Depp’s team presented convincing evidence that HE was the victim of domestic abuse, and not Amber as she had been stating publicly for some time.
I will admit that I read quite a bit about this case. Johnny Depp has always been an intriguing person to me, and lets face it, it takes a LOT of guts for a man to come forward to say “Yes I was the victim of domestic abuse”.
And of course, because this is the world we live in, there were some people- mostly women- who are wringing their hands and stating this verdict will hurt female victims. I understand the reasoning behind this, but they are barking up the wrong tree. It isn’t the verdict that caused any damage. That burden falls directly at Amber’s feet for making false accusations. She was caught in lie after lie on the stand. There was the chilling audio recording of her mocking Johnny, telling him to “go ahead and tell people” that she was abusing him because no one would believe him. It’s worth noting that at NO point during this rant does she ever claim innocence and/ or deny being an abuser.
Now, its pretty clear where I stand on this case by now. HOWEVER, there are people who took it too far the other way. Some of the memes circulating are funny, but some of them really stray into defamation themselves. Amber messed up big time and she got caught. Her career is probably over. But she IS a human being. She is a mother of a small daughter. She should be able to expect privacy in her own home. She is entitled to basic human rights.
So what have we learned here? Sadly, probably very little. The online outrage machine will chug along until some other shiny thing catches their attention and they forget all about the sad tale of Johnny and Amber. But I do hope that somewhere, a man who is a victim of domestic abuse will realize that yes, there ARE people who will believe him and support him and get him the help he needs. That would be worth way more than the 10 million dollars Johnny Depp won (but will probably never see).