Three weeks have been and gone and not a day went by where Johnny Depp's libel case against News Group Newspapers hadn't made the news. From poop in the bed to rampages and messages written in blood, the actor's marriage to Amber Heard sure presented some issues.
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But still, despite wild claims from either side nobody can make their mind up on who to believe. Could it be that Depp's drug and alcohol problems lead him to violence or was Amber Heard really the instigator of the abuse?
Now the case has heard the closing statements from each side of the lawsuit in which Depp's lawyer, David Sherborne, has labelled Heard as a 'compulsive liar and abuser':
From the big points to the small points, Ms Heard has proved herself to be a wholly unreliable witness, and, frankly, a compulsive liar, and I don’t say that lightly.
In his statement, Sherborne referred to a recording between Depp and Heard that detailed Heard hitting her husband and demonstrated that she does not shy away from violence. Sherborne told Mr Justice Nicol:
At its very core, we say it demonstrates that she is the abuser, not Mr Depp. He is no wife-beater. If it was a man who had said what Ms Heard said and who had admitted to what she admitted to, if this was Mr Depp for example, and it was the other way around, can you imagine what consternation there would be?
Sherborne had also referred to a text message sent by the Aquaman actress stating:
This is Amber and I get what I want.
The lawyer used this text to further push the narrative that Amber lied in court by chopping and changing stories to get what she wanted and to maintain her allegations of abuse against her husband:
Doctors were lying, nurses were lying, police officers are lying, only Ms Heard, who was at pains to repeat the well-rehearsed mantra that she was not here to call anyone a liar, only Ms Heard was correct at all times no matter what.
Depp is suing News Group Newspapers and their editor, Dan Wootton, over an article that claimed Depp was a 'wifebeater'. The article was titled: Gone Potty: How can JK Rowling be ‘genuinely happy’ casting wife beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film?. The publishers defended themselves by claiming that they had overwhelming evidence that Depp was guilty of domestic violence against Amber Heard who had supplied 14 different allegations of abuse.
Sherborne claims that Heard is a 'complex individual with a complex history, medical and emotional' and claims that the minute she filed for a restraining order and faced the tabloids she became an advocate against domestic abuse:
She has picked up her theme and run with it. New allegations of domestic violence have tumbled out over the years … even more in this courtroom. It is hard to keep up.
Depp's lawyer claims that the only reason that Depp had brought the matter to trial and 'subjected himself to this painful, public process' was that the Sun had already 'tried, convicted and sentenced' Depp on claims that he had always denied. He stated:
Why else would Mr Depp, this private man as he explained, expose all the most intimate details of his private life. He has never hit a woman in his entire life, period, full stop, nada. Crucially, he had also never been accused of it, apart from by Heard.
Sherborne argues that the two stars have two 'diametrically opposed accounts' where 'one side is obviously lying and one side is telling the truth'. He claims that the court has been witness to 'astonishingly self-serving and fictionalised' accounts in regards to Heard's evidence and also states that the actress' 'secret feelings book reads more like a novella than anything which matches reality'.
The lawyer refers also to a 'secret video' that Heard had taken of Depp smashing a kitchen sink in anger:
When she has her phone at the ready, where is the secret recording of Mr Depp knocking seven bells out of her, grabbing her by the throat, pulling her by the hair, screaming at her?
Sherborne also revealed that he believed that images of Amber's bruised face were also clearly faked and believes that her work as an actress has made her familiar with how to apply makeup.
He also added that Johnny Depp has long been open and honest about his issues with drugs and alcohol while Amber, who deals with the same has downplayed her own substance abuse during the trial.
The court has yet to come to a conclusion on the case.
