HIJACK: How Amber Heard Co-Opted the #MeToo Movement, and How the Mainstream Media Helped Her
By: Deborah Handover
Tags: Movies, Metoo, Entertainment, Johnny Depp, Amber Heard

HOLES IN THE NARRATIVE

There have been troubling gaps in Heard’s story since the outset. For one, Depp never actually throws anything at Heard in the video TMZ released. Additionally, two Domestic Violence-trained LAPD officers who both testified under oath to seeing no sign of injury or property damage on the night of one of Depp’s alleged attacks as early as 2016.

Then there are the paparazzi shots taken the day after Heard appeared at court with a bruise on her face, in which she appears to be both makeup and injury-free. (See below, via Us Weekly:)

Equally troubling are the surveillance videos from the elevator of the Eastern Columbia Building where Heard and Depp lived, showing her apparently injury-free in the days following the alleged May 2016 attack. Depp claims to have submitted 87 such surveillance videos to court as proof of his innocence.

Then there are the inconsistencies with Heard’s declaration and those of her witnesses. For instance, iO Tillet Wright testified that, after Heard shouted “Call 911!” on the night of the alleged May 2016 incident, the phone “disconnected”, but in Heard’s first motion to dismiss the defamation case, she claims that she shouted “I’ll call the police!” and “later learned that iO had hung up the phone” and called 911. Further, when put together, the sequence of events which Heard, Raquel Pennington, and Tillet Wright describe in their respective declarations is theoretically chronologically impossible given the allotted time.

Then, with the filing of the defamation suit in 2019, came multiple eyewitness accounts of Heard allegedly throwing things at Depp, punching him “with a closed fist,” spitting on him, and verbally abusing him on several occasions.

Other eyewitnesses such as property manager Kevin Murphy and celebrity stylist Samantha McMillan testified specifically to seeing no injuries on Heard in the days following December 15, 2015, when Heard claims Depp gave her two black eyes, pulled out her hair, “busted” her lip, and “nearly broke” her nose with a full-body-weight headbutt. Further, Heard testified that her friend Raquel Pennington and her makeup artist Melanie Inglessis discovered Heard immediately following the alleged brutal attack and phoned a nurse to “conduct a concussion check.” But Melanie Inglessis’ testimony was recently made public, and in it she says Heard was “supposed to go bowling [on December 15] but told me that she could not join because she had been in a bad fight with Johnny.” Footage from the Late Late Show with James Corden less than 24 hours later shows Heard repeatedly stretching her lips and scrunching her nose with no apparent discomfort.

Yet of all the various claims and counterclaims (we haven’t even touched Australia), doubtless the most shocking was the audio of a recorded therapy session the couple had, supposedly a few months before the divorce. In the 45-minute-long taped conversation, Heard appears to admit to hitting Depp the previous night, saying:

“I didn’t punch you. I was hitting you. I’m sorry I didn’t uh, uh, hit you in the face in a proper slap, but I did not punch you. […] I did not f***ing deck you. I f****ing was hitting 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.”

Heard also appears to admit to throwing “pots and pans” and even vases at Depp when she’s angry, but then disparages him for leaving the area or even the building whenever she shouts at him or becomes violent. This is the overarching theme of the conversation: Heard appears to be upset that Depp “splits” when fights begin, rather than staying to “fight for her.” She complains that leaving isn’t “strong” or “brave,” even calling Depp a “baby” and telling him to “grow the f**k up.”

When Depp responds, “Because you start physical fights?” Heard answers, “I did start a physical fight,” to which we hear Depp say, “Yeah, you did, so I had to get the f**k out of there.” Later in the conversation, Depp maintains that if “things get physical,” the two would “have to be apart” for a length of time, specifically saying, “There can be no physical violence.” Heard responds:

“I can’t promise that I’ll be perfect, I can’t promise I won’t get physical again. God, I f***ing get so mad sometimes I lose it.”

If verified and admitted by the court, this interaction is the antithesis of everything Heard has claimed thus far. Going back to her original declaration when filing for a restraining order, the audio blasts her portrayal of the relationship to pieces. Not only does she alternately shout at him, insult him, swear at him, and belittle him without repercussion, but her primary complaint is the precise opposite of what she would later claim ‘terrified’ her: Depp does not become verbally or physically abusive when she challenges him, he leaves.

But, even though #JusticeForJohnnyDepp trended globally following its release, this new and incredibly damning piece of evidence was met with pin-drop silence by the very outlets that had trumpeted Depp’s abuse accusation years prior. In fact, days after the audio dropped, the official MeToo Movement Twitter account openly called the turning tide a “misinformation campaign,” linking an article which characterizes the public reaction as “Depp stans” “foaming at the mouth”: