The opening arguments of Johnny Depp’s $50 million defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard took place yesterday, April 13. As the trial began, new revelations unfolded wherein Amber Heard’s lawyer Elaine Bredehoft read statements of the actress accusing Depp of sexual assault using a liquor bottle during a black-out drunk episode.
The couple was married for a year in 2015 after meeting on the sets of The Rum Diary. Depp later filed a defamation lawsuit against Heard after she published an op-ed piece for The Washington Post in 2018 accusing the Pirates of the Caribbean actor of being abusive without mentioning his name.
As a result of the article piece, Depp claimed that his reputation was tarnished and that led to a blow to his A-list movie star status.
The trial is being held at the Fairfax County Courthouse in Virginia. The original allegations included the Aquaman actress accusing Depp of physically abusing her during their relationship, which she claimed was mostly under the influence of drugs and alcohol. The duo had a messy divorce which was finalised in 2017.
A report by Rolling Stone revealed that Heard’s lawyers alleged Depp of sexual assault in the opening trial case. The claim, which was never made before by the actress, was an incident involving a “three-day blackout in which [Depp] abused and sexually assaulted Amber.”
Following Heard’s sexual assault accusations, Depp’s elder sister Christi Dembrowski, who is the president of his production company, took the stand. She spoke about the troubled upbringing she and her brother Depp had and talked about the actor’s previous marriage to Venessa Paradis, claiming that the couple rarely fought throughout their 14-year relationship.
She also claimed that Heard frequently insulted Depp and recalled one instance when the Secret Window actor met with Dior about a partnership.
“[Heard’s] reaction to that was that she was in disbelief and sort of disgust, and she said ‘Dior? Why would Dior want to do business with you? They are about class and style and you do not have style.’ It was an insulting kind of taking away that one moment, that insult was there,” Dembrowski claimed, adding that she had seen these insults multiple times. “She called him an ‘old, fat man.’ I believe he heard her call him that,” she said.
This isn’t the first time Depp was sued by his former wife over claims of abuse. He had earlier lost a libel case in London in 2020 against The Sun labelling him a “wife beater.”
