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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
I will admit that I read quite a bit about this case.\u00a0 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”.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I understand the reasoning behind this, but they are barking up the wrong tree.\u00a0 It isn’t the verdict that caused any damage. That burden falls directly at Amber’s feet for making false accusations.\u00a0 She was caught in lie after lie on the stand.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It’s worth noting that at NO point during this rant does she ever claim innocence and\/ or deny being an abuser.<\/p>\n
Now, its pretty clear where I stand on this case by now.\u00a0 HOWEVER, there are people who took it too far the other way.\u00a0 Some of the memes circulating are funny, but some of them really stray into defamation themselves.\u00a0 Amber messed up big time and she got caught.\u00a0 Her career is probably over.\u00a0 But she IS a human being.\u00a0 \u00a0She is a mother of a small daughter.\u00a0 She should be able to expect privacy in her own home.\u00a0 She is entitled to basic human rights.<\/p>\n
So what have we learned here?\u00a0 Sadly, probably very little.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That would be worth way more than the 10 million dollars Johnny Depp won (but will probably never see).<\/p>\n
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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.\u00a0 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… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t