In an August 2016 message to his agent, Johnny Depp wrote of his ex-wife Amber Heard: “She’s begging for total global humiliation. She’s gonna get it.”
This May, in Virginia’s Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse, the Pirates of Caribbean star got his wish, in a defamation lawsuit against Heard, who he married in 2015 and divorced 15 months later.
Following a six-week trial and less than three days of deliberation, a jury ruled Heard had defamed her ex-husband when she referred to herself (without naming him) as a “public figure representing domestic abuse” in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed, titled: “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”
The title was almost prophetic, given what she endured this year in what one writer deemed “one of the most toxic and terrifying eruptions of cultural misogyny that I’ve seen in my lifetime”.
Throughout the trial, the scale of vitriol lobbed at Heard became so immense that The New York Times, among other publications and experts, suggested the world’s first trial by TikTok could signal “the death of #MeToo”.
“After five years of anticipation: it’s now clear: The long-awaited and much-dreaded backlash to the Me Too movement is here,” Constance Grady wrote for Vox.
“It’s only fitting that the cultural moment that began with women speaking out against the powerful men who they say hurt them announced its end by the courts finding in favour of one of those men.”
Martha Gill echoed the sentiment in a piece for The Guardian: “The public reaction to the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial is what #MeToo backlash looks like.”
Instead, what the greatest takeaway should be from this entire saga is that it’s not #MeToo that’s dead, but the legal system. The same system, as #MeToo founder Tarana Burke wrote in a statement after the Depp/Heard verdict was delivered, “that y’all have been relying on for justice and accountability for decades to no avail”.
Heard may be the picture of privilege – white, rich, blonde and beautiful. The trial may have been sensationalised, and memefied, and splashed across the pages of tabloids, playing out at a scale that we’d never witnessed before.
But the way she has been treated – by the legal system, by Depp’s legion of fans, by the media – all for not fitting a particular version of “victim” is an affirmation of a reality that hundreds of thousands of women continue to face.
“The verdict and the online response to Amber Heard tells me that there is still a fundamental misunderstanding of intimate partner and sexual violence and how survivors respond to it,” Western Sydney University’s Dr Ashlee Gore told news.com.au.
“I’m concerned the impact of the trial has actually further distorted survivors’ experiences in the public’s imagination.”
Before a verdict had even been reached, domestic and sexual violence advocacy groups and experts in the US reported “hundreds” of survivors wishing to retract public statements they’d made in the press about their abusers, or pulling out of court cases against them.
“Lots of women told me that they were retracting from cases, that they were deciding to drop action or were deciding not to report their abusers at all,” psychologist and founder of VictimFocus, Jessica Taylor, told The Washington Post.
“They all said that it had shown them a side of the justice system that scared them and made them feel as though they would never be ‘the perfect victim’.”
Here at home, Full Stop Australia CEO Hayley Foster previously told news.com.au “many, many survivors” had called the service’s counselling lines “in distress just at the commentary throughout” the trial. Or, perhaps, in the fear that they, like Heard, would be vilified for being an imperfect victim if their own complaints ever made it to court.
“When [Heard] didn’t have photographs of the abuse, it was proof she was lying. When she did, it meant she faked them. When she had no witness accounts, it meant the violence never happened; when she did, it was proof she planned a grand conspiracy to bring Depp down,” Rayne Fisher Quann wrote in her essay, Who’s Afraid of Amber Heard?
“She was too loving at some points, too cruel at others; either so calm and collected that she must be lying or so distraught and uncertain that she must not know what she’s talking about. Amber Heard might not be a perfect victim, but she sure as hell is a typical one.”
In a four-slide Instagram post announcing that she’d made the “very difficult decision” to settle with Depp on December 20, finally bringing the case to a close, Heard herself acknowledged that “the vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimised when they come forward”.
“I was exposed to a type of humiliation that I simply cannot re-live. Even if my US appeal is successful, the best outcome would be a retrial where a new jury would have to consider the evidence again. I simply cannot go through that for a third time,” she went on.
“For too many years I have been caged in an arduous and expensive legal process, which has shown itself unable to protect me and my right to free speech. I cannot afford to risk an impossible bill – one that is not just financial, but also psychological, physical, and emotional.
“Women shouldn’t have to face abuse or bankruptcy for speaking her truth, but unfortunately it is not uncommon.”
Ultimately, Dr Gore said, “to say that Depp’s victory over Heard signals the ‘death’ or ‘the end’ of #MeToo I think is an enabling fiction”.
“If the standard metric by which the progress of the #MeToo Movement is measured is the conviction of high-profile men, then #MeToo was dead in the water from the start,” she said.
“The foundations of the #MeToo Movement run much deeper than this … The founders believe that it’s crucial for survivors of sexual abuse to understand that they are not alone in their experience.
“In connecting these common experiences, we confront the ubiquity of domestic and sexual violence, challenge the self-blame that many survivors have been taught to feel, and foster community action for prevention.”
If you’re in danger now:
• Phone the police on 111 or ask neighbours or friends to ring for you.
• Run outside and head for where there are other people.
• Scream for help so that your neighbours can hear you.
• Take the children with you.
• Don’t stop to get anything else.
• If you are being abused, remember it’s not your fault. Violence is never okay.
Where to go for help or more information:
• Shine, free national helpline available 24/7 - 0508 744 633 www.2shine.org.nz
• Women’s Refuge: Free national crisis line operates 24/7 - 0800 refuge or 0800 733 843 www.womensrefuge.org.nz
• Shakti: Providing specialist cultural services for African, Asian and middle eastern women and their children. Crisis line 24/7 0800 742 584
• It’s Not Ok: Information line 0800 456 450 www.areyouok.org.nz
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