(Fairfax) Johnny Depp’s lawyers tried Wednesday to contradict the version of Amber Heard who claims to have been the victim of domestic violence by her ex-husband one evening in May 2016, a few days before filing for divorce.
Posted at 6:41 p.m.
The former couple accused each other of defamation during this trial in Fairfax, near Washington, for a column published in the Washington Post in 2018.
Amber Heard described herself as a “victim of domestic violence” bullied by society after coming out of silence two years earlier.
In her column, the 35-year-old actress did not name Johnny Depp, 58, whom she married in 2015. But she did mention the domestic violence charges she had brought against her husband in 2016.
Photo EVELYN HOCKSTEIN, Agence France-Presse
Johnny Depp and his lawyer Ben Chew
The evening of May 21, 2016 was at the center of the debates on Wednesday. That evening, Amber Heard claims the “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor threw a cell phone at her face before leaving. The police had intervened in the evening but had not made a report.
A few days later, she appeared in court in Los Angeles, a bruise on her face, to request a protective order from the court and begin divorce proceedings.
But Isaac Baruch, a longtime friend of Johnny Depp who resided in the couple’s apartment building in Los Angeles, said on the stand that he never saw any signs of violence.
The day after the alleged violence, he meets Amber Heard in the hallway.
“She said to me ‘he threw a phone at me and reached me'”, explained the artist, friend since 1980 of the actor who paid his rent and part of his expenses.
“I looked at his forehead, the side of his face, his cheek, his neck, the other side of his face, and I can’t see anything,” he continued, claiming to have kissed her on the cheek touched without her reacting.
On May 23, he meets her again and does not notice any “redness, blisters, bruises, scars”, he explains, before claiming to have seen him enter his apartment with a make-up artist who works for the couple.
He will learn from the press that four days later, the young actress asked for a divorce when she saw photos of her “with this brown mark on her face”, he said.
And he assures that on June 3, Amber Heard told him: “I told Johnny that I didn’t want anything. It was the lawyers who pushed me to do all this”.
During his deposition, Isaac Baruch depicted a “love” relationship between the spouses and assured that he had “never seen or witnessed” acts of physical violence from his friend on Amber Heard during the three and a half years. that he lived in the building.
Johnny Depp’s lawyers say Amber Heard accused her husband of beating her in revenge after he told her of his decision to divorce her that night.