Johnny Depp, Amber Heard and the myth of the obvious abuser
We still get a lot wrong about toxic relationships.
Few celebrity breakups are as controversial as the ever-unfolding drama between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Most of the people I know are "Team Johnny" or "Team Amber," and have spent a lot of time arguing who must have been the real abuser in the troubled relationship.
In recent months, we've heard from Depp's friends, fans, and exes who claim that he could never have mistreated Amber due to her sweet and gentle nature. And there has been a lot of doubt about Heard, leading people to think that she is the primary abuser, a narcissistic gold digger, and ultimately a liar.
Neither position surprises me. I've been in many unhealthy relationships and understand how quickly a bad situation can spiral out of control. I have also witnessed many abuses. When someone you love, admire, or respect gets their name from through muddy drug like abuse allegations, it's easy to form an opinion based on who you feel is that person. Most of us find it hard to believe that abuse can be perpetrated by "good" people. This is why we tend to see domestic abuse as black and white situations with a clear victim and a well-defined abuser. We like to imagine that the real abuser is always some kind of obvious monster, and that we are not going to be manipulated by wolves in sheep's clothing.
Unfortunately, this is not particularly useful. The myth of the obvious abuser tends to do more harm than good. People easily end up defending their guilty friends and blaming the victims. We could confuse victims' self-defense and coping mechanisms as "proof" of their crimes. Victims of domestic violence may even use violence against their abusers, and it can be very difficult for outsiders to establish which person is the primary abuser and which is the primary victim.
Looking at the drama between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, it's very tempting to say that both sides have abused each other. But experts say the concept of mutual abuse is a myth, as domestic violence always involves an imbalance of power.
If anything, the civil proceedings between the high-profile couple remind us that both abusers and victims can rely on toxic habits, and that manipulation like gaslighting can make it harder to identify the "bad guy."
In January, phone recordings between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp were released, which many people considered to be a "catch" moment for Amber. In them, Heard admitted hitting Depp.
I heard: “I'm sorry I didn't … hit you in the face with a proper slap, but I was hitting you, I wasn't hitting you. Honey, you're not beaten. I don't know what my actual hand movement was, but you're fine, I didn't hurt you, I didn't hit you, I was hitting you."
Depp: “I left last night. Honestly, I swear to you because I couldn't accept the idea of more physical, more physical abuse of each other. Because if we had continued it, it would have gotten fucking bad. And honey, I told you once. I'm scared to death we're at the fucking crime scene right now."
I heard: “I can't promise you that I won't exercise again. God, sometimes I get so mad I lose it."
The footage is incredibly disturbing and it's easy to see why Depp fans believe it reveals Heard as the real abuser. At one point in the conversation, she appears to mock him for getting help, saying, “You're a fucking baby. You're a baby ".
"Why do you start physical fights?" Depp asks.
As an independent test, it's just horrible. I don't want to downplay how disturbing the entire recording is or say that the audio doesn't make Amber Heard sound terrible. She does it. At the same time, it's just a recording, a conversation, a fight. When it comes to dysfunctional relationships, an interaction between an upset partner and a sedated one is poorly representative of the full dynamic. So, I was curious about the big picture. Is Amber Heard the main abuser? Is Johnny Depp the real victim?
It's troubling to admit that a relationship can be so messy.
It turns out that other evidence paints a larger picture of a very broken relationship. In other audio, Depp repeatedly tells Heard to cut him with a knife he is holding. The recording is less than four minutes long but it is very worrying.
At no point in that clip did Heard goad or tease Depp. However, she begged him to put the knife down.
But I realized that the same people who said that Amber Heard can't regulate her own emotions enough to look like a "real victim" claimed that that is exactly what she has done in this case.
In both audios, Depp's fans praise him for keeping her cool. Many find sympathy for Depp's insistence that she simply cut him off as proof of her innocence and her guilt. I find those responses strange. Just flipping the script- If it had been Amber Heard telling Johnny Depp to cut hers off, the answer would be that she was manipulating him with threats of suicide or self-harm.
Like many other moviegoers, I always liked Johnny Depp. That's part of what made the accusations against him so sad. No one wants to see someone they admire come out as an abuser. But you know, I also think that men can be victims and women can be abusers. Which means I've been curious to know the truth in this whole thing.
To be honest, the truth looks pretty unsettling from all sides. In 2013, when Depp and Heard were still dating, the couple had several arguments over Heard's ex-girlfriend, Tasya van Ree.
A few weeks later, Depp texted his friend, actor Paul Bettany. "Let's burn Amber."
He kept texting.
"Let's drown her before we burn her! Then I'll fuck her burned corpse to make sure she's dead."
When asked about these texts in court earlier this month, Depp said he resented Amber Heard for wanting her to use less cocaine and alcohol. Hope for? I've been in a few bad relationships but I've never made “jokes” about killing a partner out of resentment towards them and I think it's safe to say that no sane person has.
Clearly, something is wrong. And to a certain extent, we know what it was about: in 2013, Johnny Depp turned to the substance abuse of him. And while Depp would later deny his drunken and disorderly behavior on a flight to Los Angeles, his text messages to Bettany said otherwise.
“I'm going to stop drinking, honey… I drank all night before I picked up Amber to fly to Los Angeles last Sunday… Ugly, man.
No food for days… powders… half a bottle of whiskey, a thousand red bulls and vodkas, pills, 2 bottles of Champers on the plane and???
An angry, aggressive Indian in a goddamn blackout, yelling obscenities and swearing at any motherfucker who comes near... I'm done."
What really strikes me about this whole exchange is Depp's lawyer Adam Waldman's response to the rude texts.
"What does the Sun do to keep Amber Heard's deception alive?" Waldman wrote.
“Today in court we learned the answer: to select a fragment of a single frustrated text message to a friend sent from 500 gigabytes of provided text messages and emails. Inconveniently for the Sun, this is what Mr. Depp said next in his text that he could never harm Amber: 'I admit I'm too screwed up in the head to spray my rage on the one I love.'”
Frankly, I have a hard time understanding how Depp saying he's too screwed up to go through with such comments makes them...better. It neither confirms nor denies him as the primary abuser (although, like the Amber Heard audios, these texts make Johnny Depp look terrible), and it adds to our understanding that this was an incredibly dysfunctional relationship from the start.
Let's be honest. Texts like these do not support the idea of Johnny Depp as a kind and gentle soul who is absolutely incapable of abuse. They're also far from the only terrifying messages from him.
In other texts read by Amber Heard's lawyers, Depp routinely described women as "sluts" and "fat ugly whores." In another text message exchange, he said he would "beat the ugly cunt" after asking if a "worthless prostitute" had arrived.
And then, in another text, he described his ex-partner Vanessa Paradis, the mother of his two children who even supported him, as a "withering cunt."
Friends, come on. This is not some kind of ally of women. This is not a great guy. If we're being charitable, maybe this is a man with a substance abuse problem who's nice when he doesn't have a shit face. But this kind of deep-seated anger and misogyny isn't something that just resolves itself. At the very least, the man has a hateful and abusive side. And while his misbehavior doesn't justify the abuse against him, he also doesn't rule out a victimized partner becoming physical as a way to cope or save face, etc.
Then there's the issue of Depp accusing his ex-wife of having affairs. He fully admits it, and his jealousy seems to have been a significant factor in the many tumultuous arguments between him and Amber.
"She's asking for total global humiliation...She's gonna get it...she sucked Mollusk's crooked dick and he gave her some shitty lawyers...I have no mercy, no fear and not a shred of emotion, or what I once thought was love for this gold." digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, useless hanging in excess flappy fish market."
Depp allegedly wrote that message in the first few months of the divorce proceedings. It is widely believed that "Mollusk" is his nickname for Elon Musk.
In court, Depp even admitted to writing Billy Bob Thornton's name on a mirror and walls in his rented house in Australia with blood from his (now famous) severed finger.
"There was an incident where Amber lied to me about Billy Bob Thornton, so I wrote his name down," Depp explained in court.
I don't know if you get it, but everything seems to come out of his mouth with such nonchalance, whether he's talking about writing names of alleged sexual rivals in his own blood or telling his ex-wife that he cut with a knife. It's at least a little unsettling.
But Depp also seemed to think that something was going on between his wife and James Franco. His lawyers also read this text message in court:
“Once again I find myself in a place of shame and regret. I really don't know why and what happened. I want to improve for you and for me I must do it. My illness somehow crept in and grabbed me. I can't live like this again and I know you can't either… I love you again, I love you, I'm so sorry. I feel so bad for disappointing you. Of yours."
When Amber didn't respond to her apology within two hours, Depp added: "I see understanding and forgiveness are not on the menu... I'm disappointed to see that, but not too surprised I guess..."
Regardless of our feelings towards Johnny Depp, these are not statements from a sane or loving man who is somehow incapable of harming others. This is manipulative shit.
And the bullshit texts continued. We found out that Depp was upset. Heard agreed to do a movie with James Franco, The Adderall Diaries. She told him that she needed to work and she needed the money, and he criticized her saying, "I'd rather she didn't lower herself to that level."
In court, Heard's lawyers claimed Depp was so jealous and controlling that she hid her schedule from him so he wouldn't know if a nude scene was planned. They also said that he didn't want her to wear sexy outfits on the red carpet.
Her response from him? Sure, he was jealous, but he was "just looking out for his professional reputation." She wanted his advice. She wanted to be taken more seriously. He thought that she was above the movies he chose. It was all for her, not for him.
Again, none of this rules out the idea that Johnny Depp has a good or kind side, but that doesn't make this behavior healthy. And to be honest, it's hard to ignore that level of jealousy from a man accused of abuse.
To further complicate the story, Johnny Depp has an inconvenient history of lashing out with physical violence when he's not sober. Many people might have forgotten this, but when Depp was still young, he had a reputation for being troublesome and violent.
In 1989, Depp was arrested for assaulting a Vancouver hotel security guard. In 1994, he was arrested for criminal mischief when he trashed a New York hotel room after a fight with his girlfriend Kate Moss. In 1999, Depp was arrested for threatening paparazzi in London with a plank of wood. In July 2018, he was sued for punching a crew member twice in the ribs during an angry tirade on the set of City of Lies.
And Amber Heard? Well, it's been said that she, too, was once arrested for domestic violence against her ex-girlfriend, Tasya van Ree, but Ree describes the events very differently than you might expect.
"(I remember) hints of misogynistic attitudes towards us that later appeared to be homophobic when they found out we were common-law couples and not just 'friends,'" her statement said. "It's disheartening that Amber's integrity and story are being called into question once again. Amber is a brilliant, honest and beautiful woman and I have the utmost respect for her. We shared 5 wonderful years together and remain close to this day."
So according to her ex, Amber never assaulted her. Instead, she claims it was a matter of homophobia and, as it happens, the charges were dropped. But, again, Depp's exes have also vouched for his character.
The coming and going is quite tiring, isn't it?
There is a long list of abuse dismissed by both Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. iO Tillett Wright, who lived with the couple for a year before they married, wrote an open letter that was published on Refinery29 in 2016. She also recently testified in court about Depp's alleged history of ear abuse.
In his letter, iO wrote:
“I knew he was soft and gentle, with a temper and a dark side, but a golden heart. I didn't want to believe it either, until I saw the remains. When you call someone a brother, you also agree to call him when he is wrong. As she, shaking and crying, described this 195-pound man throwing his entire body weight to punch his 120-pound wife in the face in a fit of rage, I found an unforgivable line in my heart had been crossed. . I witnessed firsthand the absolutely unnerving mental pretzel an abused person gets into, trying to balance the desire to protect her abuser from her, with the knowledge that his swollen face is unacceptable. I listened as she went over things she could have done to provoke him, or how she could have pissed him off enough to do this."
Heard's lawyers also read text messages to the court from 2013, where she told her mother that Depp was "violent" and "insane."
“It's terrible, mom, I don't know what to do. He is crazy, mom, violent and crazy. I'm heartbroken that this is who I love."
And then: “Okay. He is not being violent with me. The crazy, hard-to-manage mood swings."
Honestly, we may never know for sure who was the main abuser in this marriage. Clearly, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are each engaging in terribly toxic behavior. There's an incredible amount of he-said-she-said going on here, and to clear Depp of guilt as the primary abuser, we have to ignore a lot of red flags. Should the same be said for Amber?
He is not necessarily so cut and dry.
According to Depp's own confessions, he can't even remember many incidents because he was often drunk or high, but he insists that he never abused his wife. This insistence on total innocence seems to contradict his own text messages, recordings and history. Amber, on the other hand, has moments when she wavers at the question of whether or not she has been abusive.
Johnny Depp has also admitted that he was often jealous of other men during his tumultuous marriage and that he did not want his wife doing nude scenes at her work. It's hard to get over the apparent misogyny in his anger, and while we clearly see the two arguing like schoolchildren, I don't know if there's enough evidence to support the idea that Amber Heard was the primary abuser.
After all, some victims of abuse may use violence as a means of trying to regain some control or dignity. Not that it works. For a victim of domestic abuse, her own violence is sometimes a coping mechanism. I'm not saying it's right or justified, but it's human nature to lash out when we're at our wits' end. I think it's safe to see that we've seen both sides do that here.
That said, I will fully admit my bias as an outsider and survivor of various forms of abuse. Reading all the articles and evidence about Depp and Heard reminds me of watching Nicole Kidman's character spiral into the first season of Big Little Lies. It also reminds me of some of my own experiences with abusive relationships.
From what I know, victims who are "addicted" to an abusive relationship are also deeply conflicted. When I was being abused by the man I loved and struggled to get out of the relationship due to my addiction to our toxic dynamic, I almost believed her when she turned around and called me abusive.
When I talked about what was going on between us and tried to end the cycle of fighting, her response was that I was the meanest and cruelest woman she had ever met. He was so worried about her reputation, and I was so upset about us, that I wondered if telling the truth about him would make me some kind of monster.
Our fights never got physical, but they were really full of rage on both sides. And that got me thinking. That led me to admit a great deal of guilt that was never mine in the first place.
There were times with my ex when he was so twisted that he convinced me to give him the names of anyone who said a negative word against him. And I did, even though those people were just trying to help me get away from my abuser. Meanwhile, when I gave in to his demands to tell him what other people were saying about him, he told his friends that I was a crazy, abusive bitch.
It took time for me to admit that he was abusive and finally walk away from him. It also took time for the people who were "on his side" to see his true colors. And it took time for other people to accept that he really wasn't "trying to get it."
All of this is partly why I think we'll never really know the truth about Depp and Heard's marriage. I doubt that either of them really understands the truth at this point.
Manipulators manipulate. They are good at what they do and for good reason. Most abusers get away with it, you know, and that's in part because they not only manipulate their partner and others, but also manipulate themselves.
So regardless of our feelings towards Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, we have to acknowledge that this relationship was incredibly toxic. And toxic relationships don't just repair themselves. It takes a committed effort to change. Of course, some pairs of people are more toxic together than others, too.
That said, I don't think it's enough to just talk about the abuse. We have to do it, yes. But we must also address the importance of good mental health in the context of our relationships. Even if we can't definitively say who the primary abuser was in this particular Hollywood heartbreak, we can say without a doubt that both sides have struggled deeply with their mental health and conflict resolution.
It is likely that much abuse and pain could have been prevented with better attention to her mental health. And I would go so far as to say that both sides have suffered a great trauma that needs to be healed. More now than ever.
Abuse is not always obvious. Abusers often hide in plain sight. Our best line of defense?
Better management of mental health and learning to recognize warning signs.
