The lawsuit continues between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, both accused of defamation in the case concerning their tumultuous divorce. The two exes have been facing each other for a week now as the judges painfully try to disentangle fact from fiction in their many mutual accusations. This Tuesday, it was the actor’s turn to testify to his past. Heartbreaking, he spoke of his violent mother, who traumatized their childhood.
Evoking “ashtrays, high heels or a phone“thrown at the head of his children, he explained that he and his sisters were so afraid of Betty Sue Palmer, their mother, that they tried to”stay out of reach in a fit of anger“. Able “to hit his children in the head”, she had “a capacity to be as cruel as anyone else can be“, according to the words of the actor at the helm.
But all this aggression did not represent the worst moments to live for Johnny Depp and his two sisters. “Verbal and psychological abuse was often worse than physical abuse. The blows just hurt, and the pain you learn to live with. We learn to accept it, yes, to live with it“, he explained.
Died at the age of 81 in 2016, a few days before the divorce was requested between Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, Betty Sue had calmed down as she aged, according to the interpreter of Jack Sparrow. However, his sister Christi had shared the same facts at the start of the trial. “She hit us, she threw things at us“, she had told.
“Very young, when we were small children, nothing that happened at home was good. And when I got older, or rather when Johnny and I got older, we decided that once we left, once we had our own house, we would never repeat that kind of pattern.“, she had concluded before the court.
A loving but overly reserved father
So did Johnny Depp plunge into aggression like his mother? The actor assures us not, and prefers to evoke his father, Johnny Depp Sr., a shy and reserved man who has never returned violence against his wife. Described as a man”very kind“, “silent” and “shy“by the actor, he was according to him not”a man who confronts himself“.
“When Betty Sue, my mom, went overboard with my dad (of course in front of the kids, she didn’t mind) he remained admirably calm and stoic, didn’t move as she yelled horrible things at him, he just stood there and absorbed all this violence“, he told the court. “There was never a day when my dad lost control, attacked my mom, or hit my mom, or even said a bad thing about her.“.
The actor, finishing his speach, even wanted to pay tribute to him: “In my head as a 5-year-old boy, I wondered why he was doing this. Why didn’t he leave her? But he did not do it. He was able to keep calm and maintain the relationship with his children… He is a good person“. As a reminder, Johnny Depp is also the father of two children (Lily-Rose, 22 and Jack, 19), born of his relationship with Vanessa Paradis and who have always supported him in this difficult affair.