I attended the Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard Trial. Here is the Truth
It has now been several weeks since the Depp vs Heard trial ended. On June 1st, justice was finally served, and you would think that would be the end of it. However, a certain Amber has continued to rant about her loss to the media. With this ranting came some very interesting claims about what the crowds outside the courthouse were actually like. So, as someone who attended this trial on a daily basis, I would like to tell my experience of the crowds, the fan culture, and especially the media, that were at that court house everyday with me.
I arrived in Fairfax, VA on April 9th and left on May 28th. I went to the courthouse every single day the court was in session. That’s a grand total of 26 days. I saw the evolution of the crowds and how it became an absolute circus. I saw everything. On the first day, I arrived at the courthouse at 8:30 and easily got a wristband to go in and watch something the public was not allowed to see: jury selection. On that first day, there was more media and paparazzi than fans. As soon as I joined the small group of about 10 fans that had gathered, the first thing I noticed were the photographers hiding behind a fence taking pictures of us. There were several tents of media crews as well. They all wanted to interview us, but knowing they would twist my words, I said no to every one of them. At the time no one knew that Johnny was coming in through a secret entrance, so we were all patiently waiting for him to come through the front doors. Unfortunately for us, that never happened. But I thought it nice that all the media missed out on harassing a man going in to face his abuser.
Everyday that week I showed up to the courthouse at 7 in the morning. I’d quickly grab a wristband, go through security, then sit in the hallway with the other people from Twitter and wait for about 2 hours until they let people in. All the people there that first week were there for the simple reasoning of wanting Johnny to get justice. Some, like myself, were victims of various forms of abuse. Others knew people who were. All of us had been following this case for years. We were not just there because we had a crush on Johnny or because we wanted to see him in person. Sure, sitting in a room with him everyday was cool, for me at least, but that’s NOT why I was there. I was there to see a fellow victim stand up for all of us who had gone through something similar to what he had gone through, and to let him know that he was doing not only the right thing to do, but a very important thing to do.
Of course, Amber did not like the fact that Johnny had supporters. What I am about to say may sound almost conspiratorial, but I promise you it is fact. I have seen screenshots and proof that this really happened. On the first official day after lunch, several of us noticed Eve Barlow, Amber’s bestie or girlfriend (honestly who knows), sitting in the first row, turning around every so often and scanning the crowd of us sitting behind her. The next day, one of Johnny’s supporters with one of the largest twitter followings was called from the courtroom and banned from the rest of the trail for something stupid she had tweeted and deleted 6 years ago. Everyone was shocked that something like this had been shown to the sheriffs. We had no idea how they had been made aware of that. But, that afternoon I got up to use the bathroom and noticed Eve standing in the hallway being reassured by the exact sheriff that had removed the person. I knew she was working with Amber and her fans to get us all removed.
And the next day, it was my turn. The sheriffs were shown a tweet from 3 years ago that had obviously been deleted since my profile picture in the screenshot was very old. In the tweet I mock the fact that Amber’s dad was threatening to shoot Johnny since he’s a redneck macho guy. It was a stupid thing to write. That’s why it was deleted. But, it was not about Amber. However, Eve or the one Amber fan there had reported it and said I’d made a typo. To make matters even worse, they decided to give my full name and information to 2 biased reporters, Elizabeth Rosner and Ben Kesslen from the New York Post, who then doxxed me and the other person who was removed. I pleaded with them to change my full name to my username instead, but they ignored my every attempt at contacting them. Their goal was clear. They wanted to make Johnny’s supporters seem insane because how dare anyone support a man for the simple reason that he is a victim. Clearly we were just crazed fangirls. But I am here to tell you we are not.
However, somehow Johnny’s team found out that we had been removed. That Friday, after Eve was caught twisting evidence to get Johnny’s witnesses disqualified, Johnny’s team successfully got Eve banned from the court. And to make my life better, at the end of week 2, somehow the judge learned of us getting banned and said that was ridiculous and I was let back in. Of course the media would never admit to this, but I have the wristbands to prove it.
I also have proof that our guesses were right. Eve was in a group chat with a bunch of Amber fan accounts. They were stalking all the people attending the trial on the internet, searching through years of tweets, and trying to find anything incriminating to get us thrown out of court. I tell this story because Amber will have you believe she didn’t notice the fans until she got up on the stand. She will play victim and act like we had shouted something violent at her or entered the court with weapons and she felt in fear for her life. But she is a liar. This is not true.
Amber will also tell you that she had to drive past 6 city blocks of people holding “death to Amber” signs everyday for 6 weeks and that people had to be shoved behind barricades to prevent them from running at her car. So, I wanna focus the rest of this on what exactly was going on outside the courthouse because that is where I spent the majority of my time there.
On Monday of the 2nd week, I looked at the videos of Johnny arriving and leaving, looked at the photos of the courthouse on google maps, and figured out where this door was. When I got back there at 4:50 that day, there was one photographer on a ladder, one youtuber that I knew, maybe two fans on our side of the road, and two fans on the other side. After Johnny drove off, the two from the other side came over and informed us that Johnny waved to you if you stood on that side of the street. The next day, that’s where I stood, and every day after I waved to Johnny as he left. On the first day there were 5 fans. On the last day there were over 500.
Things did not pick up until after Johnny had finished his testimony. This is because that’s when it started to go viral and people realized it was possible to see Johnny Depp in person. That’s when the actual fangirls and families and dogs and, yes, alpacas started to show up. People were desperate just to glimpse him. They realized you could even sit in the courtroom with him all day and started lining up the night before to do so as if this was a film premiere, which is the reason I stopped trying to get in. These people were just fans of his movies or his looks and the media ate that stuff up. They LOVED the swarms of dumb people showing up to swoon over Johnny and fight to get in the courtroom in the middle of the night. They loved how they would give them stupid statements like “I think they’re both bad but I support Johnny because he’s hot” (actual thing I heard someone say). Now they could write their articles about how Johnny did not have supporters because he was a victim, but because he was an attractive famous actor. So, because I can’t tell hundreds of people to stop talking to the media, I decided to give them all a statement of the truth.
But despite me giving statements to the Washington Post, People Magazine, the New York Post, The Sunday Times, Court TV, the Law and Crime Network, and Fox, not a single interview I did ever got posted. This was because I purposely told them what they didn’t want to hear. When asked as a woman how I felt about what Amber was describing, I said as an abuse victim I felt triggered by her false allegations. When asked why I was there, I told them the reason I stated above, and watched the interviewer scramble to change the subject to what Johnny would say to us as he drove by. The media was desperately trying to discredit Johnny in every way possible, and were now using his supporters to do so.
By the end of week 3, people had realized they could throw gifts into Johnny’s car and give him a high five. Of course this was extremely dangerous, so the sheriffs tried in every way they could to prevent people from doing that. Eventually they resorted to having to park police cars on the side of the street to act as a barricade since they didn’t actually own enough barricades for that large of a crowd.
That’s something Amber fails to realize people can easily notice. Fairfax is a very small town. It is a DC suburb. The courthouse is located in the main bit of Fairfax, which are 4 roads that form a small grid, almost like NYC or Philadelphia but nothing like it in terms of size. There are only 6 real “city blocks” in all of Fairfax and Johnny would only drive past 2 of them. I knew this because I hate large crowds so to avoid them and have a moment each day where me and Johnny would actually make eye contact, I would stand at the intersections of these blocks with the OG people I had met in the first week. People did figure out where these intersections were eventually, but even on the last day there were only a few dozen people there. Not a single person at these intersections ever had a sign for Amber for one simple reason: she did not go the same way.
Speaking of which, despite the dramatic, horrifying image Amber and the media like to paint of Johnny’s rabid fans attacking Amber, people mostly just ignored her. Sometimes they would boo when she left, other times people didn’t even realize it was her car. No one ever ran into the street to attack her. No one ever had signs with threats of death or violence. The only signs I ever saw addressed to Amber said things like “Amber Turd” or were mocking her lawyers. But even then, 95% of the signs were for Johnny. Everyone there was there to wave to Johnny as he left. They couldn’t care less about Amber.
By the end of it all, I’d met some amazing people, made lots of new friends, and learned so much about how the media love to twist things to fit a narrative. They continue to do this by telling everyone the verdict was misogynistic and refusing to state that Johnny is a survivor of abuse. So, until that changes I will be here to tell the truth about the people who were there from day one and why. I’ll continue to call out Amber’s lies as she pretends to be a victim of the entire world. I’ll be more than happy to answer anyone’s questions about any of this. As Johnny said many times, I’m obsessed with the truth and it’s the most important thing to get it out there.
