Where is the Lie?
Then 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.
That’s it. That’s what the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp trial was about.
The main question for the jury was: did that sentence defame him?
In Virginia, where the trial took place, defamation is defined as a published statement that is a “false statement of fact” that harms the plaintiff’s reputation in the community and the defendant either knew the statement was false or “recklessly disregard[ed] their falsity.”
Let’s parse it. Does that sentence state that Johnny Depp actually abused Amber Heard? Does it even name him?
The 2018 Op Ed that started it all was an article by Heard about being perceived as a woman who had accused her partner of domestic abuse. How it affected her career, her ability to go out in public. That’s it.
In 2016, Heard accused Depp of “being verbally and physically abusive” as part of her application for a restraining order. The couple ultimately settled and released a joint statement that “[n]either party has made false accusations for financial gain” and that “[t]here was never any intent of physical or emotional harm.”
Depp didn’t sue over the 2016 statement — he sued over the 2018 one.
So, let’s be very clear here. This case wasn’t about whether Depp abused Heard or whether Heard abused Depp. It was about whether what she said in her 2018 Op Ed was a lie that she told knowing it was a lie.
I don’t see how anyone could say that it was.
So, here’s where I get mad. I’ve been staring at memes and news headlines and Tweets for weeks about what a terrible person Amber Heard is and men can be abused, too, and ha ha, she pooped in the bed. I don’t care about any of that.
What I care about is that Depp dragged Heard to court in Virginia and the judge allowed the whole thing to be televised for our sick enjoyment and she was humiliated again and again while the whole world posted mocked up Pirates of the Caribbean photos and now she has to pay him money and for what? That one sentence about how she became a symbol of a woman who was abused and how it upended her life.
What does this mean for other women? For Evan Rachel Wood? If defamation can be found in that bland, benign hint of a statement that maybe, maybe Depp maybe I don’t know could have been abusive (maybe?), how will women anywhere be able to speak of what happened to them without fear? In a world where “he said, she said,” usually means, “that girl is probably lying,” how can we ask a woman to make herself vulnerable like that? Why should she ever break her silence?
Women already believe that there’s no point in going to the police because they won’t do anything to help them or, worse, they will be put on the stand and retraumatized by their abuser’s attorney. Now they can’t even say the words?
The power of #MeToo was women finally being able to say what happened to them and have others believe them. As a scholar in this area, I have had women approach me to ask whether they should speak up for fear of being sued. I always thought that the truth would protect them, ultimately. I thought that, at the very least, they could describe what happened to them without naming their abuser, and there was no way that they could be sued.
It seems I was wrong.
