It is Not Disbelief That is Dangerous to Our Society; It is Belief. — George Bernard Shaw
Tags: Belief, Domestic Violence, Johnny Depp, Amber Heard

Belief. A topic I have spoken on many times before. For one something to be cherished and at the same time something that can be utterly dangerous. A thing that seems so innocent and wonderful, as a child desperately believes in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy; yet also a thing that has caused so much devastation. Belief that an entire race or religion of the human population is not worthy of life. Belief that any one person is better than any other based on a skin color, a gender, a social status, a place of upbringing, or any number of fatuous grounds and conjectures. Belief in something so silly as that the Earth is truly flat when the spherical shape of Earth was discovered in the 3rd century BC.

A belief becomes dangerous when it remains unchallenged or challenge is refused for fear of what may be revealed. Questions must always be asked about ideas. If there are no questions then there can be no ultimate truth. If Columbus hadn’t questioned the idea of only sailing one way to India how much longer would it have taken to discover the ‘New World’? If the Greeks hadn’t challenged beliefs that disease is manifested out of superstition and religious punishment, where would the argument for evidence based medicine begin? Everything begins with a question. A very simple thought that simply presents, is this belief or idea valid? No one should ever be shamed for asking. As everyone has heard throughout their time in school, “there’s no such thing as a stupid question”. This should be celebrated. The notion of challenging to further understand, or to correct something that has been widely held as true or not true, should be encouraged with gusto.

To shut down a line of questioning because “it doesn’t work that way” or “that’s not what I was told” is not a valid argument by any stretch of the imagination. The entire point of the question is to ascertain whether things work the way we believe them to and if there is truth to what has been told. It is dangerous to silence people with opposing opinions or thoughts to what is accepted as status quo. It is dangerous to not allow people to wonder and to shame them for doing so. This by no means suggests that every hypothesis will work out or even that it is feasible or justifiable, only that the process of questioning itself should be endorsed.

The most minacious belief of all is one that, when challenged with irrefutable evidence to the contrary, still prevails because of fear. Fear that this *thing* that has been so widely held as an ultimate truth and is so deeply ingrained into one’s psyche that to dismantle it would cause some kind of catastrophic collapse of their very existence. Fear is a very powerful motivator. It of course prevents people from causing themselves deliberate harm in a number of literal circumstances. It also prevents people from causing themselves harm in a metaphorical sense, when they refuse to accept that something has changed or that there is an exception to the rule, because what they believe has become so powerful and all consuming that it can no longer be any other way. Ever. There is another fear. Fear that if people knew you didn’t believe something that was so widely regarded as true you may be ostracized. Fear so paralyzing that going against the grain may incite anger or distaste towards you that you stay silent and feign acceptance to gain acceptance.

All of this brings us now to a very specific belief that is now being contentiously challenged at some of the highest levels of law and public forum. The belief that men cannot be the victims of domestic violence at the hands of women. It is of course true that women can be and are injured by men. It is also true that men have been and can be injured by women. There is this pervasive thought that women are small and fragile beings and they cannot inflict damage upon others. Whilst women have fought for generations to dispel this very thinking, it suddenly becomes weaponized as a winning attribute when a woman is accused of violence. The word for this is hypocrisy. Women can do anything men can do — except be violent, they can never be that. Before we delve into my usual subject matter I want to highlight a few very prominent cases of female perpetrators of violence and I think one in particular will look extremely familiar.

Just in the last month a female boxer was arrested on suspicion of beating her husband to death. Vivane Obenauf, 34, was arrested for allegedly perpetrating a “sustained and violent assault” on her 66 year old husband whom she had only just married in January.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9026013/Female-boxer-Viviane-Obenauf-arrested-suspicion-beating-husband-death.html

Alex Skeel, of the UK, was nearly killed by his girlfriend who is alleged to have poured boiling water on him, slashed him with knives, isolated him from his friends and family, and hit him with glass bottles amongst other claims. The police finally intervened after he continued to make excuses for her on occasions they were called to his residence by friends or neighbors. He was told he was 10 days from death at the time of getting away from her. She is now in jail for coercive and controlling behavior.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/81a8f303-5849-45b8-85a0-e8532b5d948b

Phil Hartman was a Canadian comedian and actor. He rose to fame on Saturday Night Live and later starred in a popular TV show called News Radio. In 1987 he married a model and aspiring actress named Brynn Omdahl and they had 2 children together. Their marriage was reportedly difficult as she was intimidated by his success and frustrated that she couldn’t achieve her own fame. She was reportedly jealous and verbally and physically abusive towards him. She sent threatening letters to his exes and Hartman nearly retired from acting to save the marriage. He tried to get her acting roles but she became dependent on alcohol and narcotics and the children had to be removed from the home on occasion because of her drug and booze fueled rages. She wrote threatening letters to his employer that were never sent. His coworkers described him as a family man who cared deeply for his children. In May 1998 Brynn had a “heated” argument with Hartman after she returned from a meal out, he went to bed and at 3am she shot him 3 times. In the head, neck and chest, killing him instantly. She was taking Zoloft, had been drinking, and was using cocaine. She then took her own life after confessing the murder to several friends. The LAPD listed cause of death as “domestic discord”. Friends of Brynn said she had trouble controlling her anger and got attention by losing her temper although they always gave the appearance of being happy and well-balanced as a couple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Hartman

We now come to American actor Johnny Depp. After telling his then wife Amber Heard that he was finished with the marriage and would be seeking a divorce she undercut him and filed first, producing a list of extortion demands to keep the divorce quiet. On the filing she cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for separation. When he refused her demands for ownership of luxurious condos, tens of thousands of dollars a month in spousal support, and a number of other extravagant requests, she launched domestic abuse allegations at him in the public. Ever since then it has been a heated battle between the two as more and more evidence is brought to light. Depp largely stayed quiet until 2018 when The Sun tabloid printed an article directly accusing him of being a wife beater. Later that same year Amber herself would pen an op-ed for The Washington Post referring to her relationship with Depp and propping herself up as a survivor of domestic violence. He then sued both The Sun and Heard directly for libel and defamation.

In his claim against Heard came the first revelations that Depp may have in fact been the victim of abuse and not she as was claimed. He detailed her aggressive nature and a number of altercations where he alleges she caused him injuries, including the amputation of his finger tip during a rage in Australia. I’m not going to rehash everything that has transpired but in early 2020 audio tapes were released where Amber continuously admits to acts of violence against him, with her main anger towards him being the fact that he constantly runs away from her fights. I believe most have heard these long tapes already but for anyone who has not here is the link to the court submitted versions of this audio in its entirety.

https://www.courttv.com/news/amber-heard-witness-statements-depp-blamed-the-monster-for-physical-verbal-abuse/

Now coming back to that discussion about belief. The public largely sided with Heard in 2016, they had no reason not to. A woman was claiming violence and she had photos spread across People Magazine to prove it. In that moment she cemented her story, she struck first and she struck with devastating force that was heard the world over. She knew it would stick with the mixture of his star power and her allegations. At the time few cared to delve deeper into her claims or to question her accusations. If they did they were met with rousing cries of “how dare you” and “she said so”. Women are to be believed at all costs when they allege something against their male partners, never mind that cracks almost instantly began to appear in the facade.

The LAPD, who were called to the home on May 21, 2016 in relation to the ‘phone throwing’ incident, stated they saw nothing out of place and nothing wrong with Heard other than she appeared to have been crying and her face was flushed. They also had no idea the call involved Johnny Depp as the call was placed under the name Heard. The 911 call log shows him as being named Johnny Heard. When they arrived, Heard and her friends refused to give any more details on him, his whereabouts, or his identity. They found nothing wrong and Heard alleged a verbal disagreement so they left their business card with her and departed. Not widely reported is that some hours later another set of police arrived and also saw nothing. Two separate calls, four different officers, and nothing amiss.

The building personnel gave an off the cuff statement to the press that they had seen nothing wrong with Heard in the days after this alleged incident. The public would later learn that Heard tried to coerce them into retracting this and making a new statement to a friend of hers at People Magazine that they had indeed seen her injured. They refused and referred Heard to their company legal team.

These revelations made some people start to reconsider what they had heard but her claims hit with such force that many were fearful to question her. Again, the belief system. She had made serious and very public claims against someone, the question that began to follow was, why would she lie? When a specific example is challenged in a way that goes against a core belief it is not unusual for people to try and dismiss the contradictory evidence and attempt to justify the event in a way that fits it back into their worldview. The officers were protecting him (see above about not knowing his identity), she must have been wearing makeup and hid her injury from the building staff (more than a few of them testified to seeing her for days, with clearly no makeup on, and nothing wrong). It usually takes something so unbelievably discrediting, patently undeniable, and of equal or more catastrophic force, that to continue to believe the original narrative would then make someone look uninformed and uneducated. In a word, nuclear. Johnny Depp would get his nuclear moment with the audio tapes.

The amount of violence that Heard admits to in the above linked tapes is appalling. Amongst a number of things is punching him in the face, throwing things at him, slamming a door into his head and admitting to starting physical fights. She does not, at any point, insinuate self defense or accuse him of assaulting her other than to say “you hit back” to which he responds that he pushed her off/away from him, which she doesn’t dispute and goes into a tirade about why she isn’t going to discuss details of that fight, and a line to which he admits throwing a can back at her in Australia during the incident in which his finger tip was severed. Add to this the fact he has produced a number of eyewitnesses to her attacks on him and her stories completely fall apart.

These tapes and their contents flew round the world with the same, if not more, furor than her original claims. The tides were turned and they would be turned for good. To have full admittance and undeniable proof in the form of a recording that spans hours led to a world shifting event that suddenly made people understand why she had lied and cemented him as a victim of domestic violence. She had lied because she wanted to undercut him. To seal her status first so she could remain unchallenged and stop him from speaking about anything that had happened to him. She was scared that when he left her and the marriage he would talk, and she had to be the one to talk first and effectively silence him. She never anticipated that he would indeed fight back under the rule of law, she saw him as weak and assumed that he would just stay silent and accept her further abuse through the media. Luckily he found his strength and stood up to her.

Fast forward to July 2020. The case against The Sun went to trial in London. Outside the court Depp was greeted daily by throngs of fans and admirers offering support in the wake of so much of his personal life being laid bare to the world. For most who followed the trial closely it appeared inherently obvious that Heard was lying about everything. Her claims so exaggerated and full of ridiculous details and mistakes that she was confronted with, while Depp openly admitted to his struggles with substance abuse yet maintained his innocence against the abuse allegations and provided all evidence to the contrary. He supplied medical and photographic documentation for his own injuries, he supplied the police depositions and they testified in person, he supplied witnesses to her attacks on him, he supplied security camera footage of Heard without injury in the days after she alleges assault. He supplied everything that appeared necessary to completely discredit her and she appeared to have been the creator of her own demise. She supplied false evidence and claimed horrific injuries that were countered with photographs of her doing public appearances the very next day, or not aligning at all with the remarkable levels of violence she claims to have endured.

She supplied no medical or hospital records to supplement her claims of broken bones. She supplied no evidence to support her claims of absolutely gruesome episodes of violence that, if true, would have left her with lengthy hospital stays and near death on more than one occasion. One does not need to be an expert in medicine to know that her allegations are in no way based in reality and cannot be true when compared with her photographic submissions and behavior in the days after these alleged assaults occur.

Unfortunately disaster struck when the ruling in this case finally arrived. After months of anticipation for what would surely be a resounding victory for Depp, he lost. Justice Andrew Nicol sided with The Sun and declared Heard’s allegations to be “substantially true”. This sent shockwaves around the world as most could not believe it. Survivors of abuse scoffed as they recounted their own court losses in the face of all evidence, others chastised the judge for simply taking the woman’s side. The ruling was condemned by most of the public while the media ran with the victory for themselves and began to write unabashedly that Johnny Depp is a wife beater. It had been decreed by a judge after all so who now would challenge that result.

The ruling in and of itself is deeply flawed on a number of levels in my personal opinion. That opinion is shared by many members of the public as well as a great deal of professionals in the field of law, who have examined it and the case as a whole. There are tons of fallacies and incorrect assumptions throughout. Never mind the complete disregard of evidence against Heard and excusing of the lies she was caught in at every turn. The most dangerous narrative it has raised is that Depp is a court ruled wife beater. This is not the truth. He has never been criminally charged or convicted in this case, has no convictions for violence anywhere in the world, and has simply lost a libel claim against a disgusting English tabloid. Unfortunately it would cause a massive fallout in any event, leading to him swiftly losing his starring role in the Fantastic Beasts franchise as Gellert Grindelwald. An appalling move from Warner Bros studios that incited a weeks long public backlash against the studio for their decision.

There are a number of theories as to how or why the judge came to the decision he did. I’m not going to entertain a lot of them other than to say that his belief, and possibly the beliefs of some of his family members, may have had some influence on it. To very publicly decree that a woman has lied about domestic violence is a heavy hammer to drop. Although I personally believe that the law is the law no matter the circumstances and should be applied equally no matter the circumstances, it is possible that he felt it would be too disastrous to condemn a female in this way. He may have even taken the, “why would she lie” approach. He certainly may have been influenced by someone in his family, friend, or professional circles. He may have decided that Johnny could withstand the judgement against him because he is a man after all, men can just take it and never complain or feel emotional about anything. He may have also just simply, believed her.

I find the latter to be hard to stomach after examining all of the evidence and testimony but that’s the thing about beliefs. They will sometimes make you say and do things that seem completely absurd to others but are completely valid and unproblematic to you.

In the wake of everything the public support for Depp has grown to fever pitch. As I said earlier, the audios proved nuclear to Heard and her credibility. She has now undertaken a PR stance to completely undermine that public support and make various accusations against those who speak out against her. She has filed a $100 million counter claim against Depp alleging that he and his lawyer are running an internet ‘smear campaign’ against her with the use of sophisticated Russian bots. Her previous lawyer, Roberta Kaplan (who dropped her as a client after the audio tapes were released), has compared those who support Depp to the KKK, nazis, and Trump Supporters. It’s worth mentioning that she was reprimanded by the judge in the Virginia defamation suit, which is yet to be heard, for giving misleading statements to the media surrounding various court decisions. A profile was written on Depp in The Hollywood Reporter that reeks of character assassination and never mentions Heard or the evidence against her.

What all of this name calling and peacocking really means is that they are scared. The media knows they have lost the public on this matter and in that an entire belief structure is being crushed and dismantled. Kaplan has a vested interest even after having left Heard and her case because she is a founding member of the #TimesUp legal defense fund. An organization who’s purpose is supposed to be to help victims of sexual harassment and the like. The problem that ensued for her recently is that the organization has been found to be funneling more funds to their executives and their lush board meetings than actually helping anyone. Yelling about poor defenseless women and big bad men is a big business, and Depp threatens the very existence of that business if he gets a fair shake. Their and Heard’s answer to that is to try and silence everyone by slapping them with labels. They’re bots, they’re incapable of rational discourse, they have no understanding of the English language. I wish I were joking but these are actually literal quotes from Kaplan herself. I think that’s rather abusive in and of itself.

If you have to try and silence a massive number of people and label them as essentially heretics, then what does that really say about you? In my opinion it says that you are paralyzed with fear that your beliefs are being challenged and you now stop at nothing to keep those conversations from happening or seeming legitimate. The attempt to intimidate and oppress the public into silence is a wild gamble. There is no conceivable payoff for that maneuver as the pushback will only grow louder and more severe no matter the subject. Telling people that they must believe something because someone said so went out of fashion in the Middle Ages and won’t be reappearing any time soon. We live in the age of information, with knowledge and resources available at the swipe or click of a finger, and this is terrifying to people like Amber Heard and Roberta Kaplan because they know that people are aware of where to find the truth and that they are actively seeking it out.

I don’t know what the future holds for Johnny Depp or his case against Heard in Virginia. I can only hope with the advantage of a jury trial vs one sole man in the UK that people will listen to what the evidence, witnesses, and Heard herself all say. I hope they take it upon themselves to challenge whatever belief they may have in a case such as this, to make sure that the truth is what ultimately prevails. Not a single person or a preference or what they believe should be true, but what actually is true.

“Villainy wears many masks, and none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.”

- Washington Irving -

*The UK trial transcripts can be found here — https://www.nickwallis.com/depp-trial

*All documents and motions filed to this point in Virginia can be found here — https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/circuit/high-profile-cases