Heard's op-ed

**Heard's op-ed** refers to an op-ed written by Amber Heard that was published by *The Washington Post* on December 18, 2018 titled "Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence—and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change."

## Background

In 2018, two years after Heard had filed for divorce and pledged to donate her divorce settlement to charity, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU invited her to become an ambassador for their organization and to work with them on an op-ed to bring attention to the issue of sexual assault and domestic violence issues. Heard agreed.

At the time, the issues that the op-ed would address — sexual assault and domestic violence — were especially salient in light of the confirmation hearing of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the accusations of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, as well as the fight to extend the Violence Against Women Act, which ultimately lapsed in February of the following year. The op-ed was intended to push for legislative and regulatory reforms that the ACLU has long supported as part of women’s rights and gender justice work.

## Content

In the op-ed, Heard wrote that she was exposed to abuse at a very young age. As a result, she learned from early on that men have the power — physically, socially and financially — and that a lot of institutions support that arrangement. She wrote: “I knew this long before I had the words to articulate it, and I bet you learned it young, too.” By the time she was of college age, she had been harassed and sexually assaulted, but she kept quiet about it, as she did not expect filing complaints would bring justice.

She then explained that she changed her position on this in 2016, two years before she penned this op-ed. That year Heard took part in a PSA for the #GirlGaze Project, in which she discussed her experience with domestic violence. The same year she also wrote an emotionally charged letter for *Porter* magazine about domestic violence. In the op-ed, she stated: "Two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out". Her friends had warned her that taking on such a public position meant she wouldn’t work again as an actor and that she would be blacklisted, she wrote that this turned out to be true as she had been recast in one movie and was dropped for an advertising campaign she shot for a global fashion brand. "I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse."

> Imagine a powerful man as a ship, like the Titanic. That ship is a huge enterprise. When it strikes an iceberg, there are a lot of people on board desperate to patch up holes – not because they believe in or even care about the ship, but because their own fates depend on the enterprise.
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She continued the op-ed about the #MeToo movement, saying that we are in a transformative political moment and discussed accusations of sexual misconduct – including allegations of assault and harassment against the then US president – as well as the importance of fighting sexual assault on college campuses. The op-ed also called for Congress to re-authorize the VAWA and raised concern about the changes that had been proposed to Title IX, which the op-ed argued could potentially "weaken protections for sexual assault survivors".

Heard ended the op-ed by elaborating on what consequences she faced in her daily life by speaking up. She explained that she wrote the piece “as a woman who had to change my phone number weekly because I was getting death threats. For months, I rarely left my apartment, and when I did, I was pursued by camera drones and photographers on foot, on motorcycles and in cars. Tabloid outlets that posted pictures of me spun them in a negative light. I felt as though I was on trial in the court of public opinion — and my life and livelihood depended on myriad judgments far beyond my control.”.

The op-ed did not mention any names of persons.

## Trials

### US trial

*Main article: US trial*
In February 2019, Heard's former husband Johnny Depp sued Heard over this op-ed. He alleged three counts of defamation, each claiming $50 million in damages. The trial was held at the Fairfax County Circuit Court with this location chosen due to *The Washington Post*'s being a newspaper printed in the county and created online through servers in Virginia. The jury ruled that the statements in the op-ed were false and defamed Depp with actual malice, awarding Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages from Heard with the court reducing the punitive damages to $350,000 due to a limit imposed by Virginia state law.

The day after the verdict of the trial was announced, *The Washington Post* affixed an editor’s note to the top of the op-ed outlining in detail which statements had been found defamatory.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Amber Heard (December 18, 2018). Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on April 12, 2019.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 ACLU (May 18, 2022). What You Need to Know About ACLU Artist Ambassadors, Including Amber Heard. ACLU. Archived from the original on May 18, 2022.
3. ↑ Leonie Cooper (June 1, 2022). What did Amber Heard’s Washington Post op-ed actually say?. The Independent. Archived from the original on June 4, 2022.
4. ↑ CL-2019-2911 John C. Depp, II v. Amber Laura Heard. *Fairfax County Circuit Court* 4 (March 1, 2019). Archived from the original on April 28, 2022.
5. ↑ Bill Chappell; Jaclyn Diaz (June 1, 2022). Depp is awarded more than $10M in defamation case against Heard and she gets $2M. NPR.
6. ↑ Oliver O'Connell (Jun 4, 2022). Washington Post adds editor’s note to Amber Heard’s 2018 op-ed after Johnny Depp verdict. The Independent.