Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard

Very good point. Nothing worse than not being believed. IMO.

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While domestic violence victims do not all present in the same way, I have a Bachelor's in psychology and have studied trauma, and also worked with populations during and after college that experienced a wide variety of traumas.

I'd say being falsely accused is probably right about up there with it. Not that we need to parse exactly how awful all these awful things are.

Fair enough.

I disagree.


Alarming IMO is that Amber is going to appeal. (Maybe it’s a stupid rumor. Can’t recall where I read this.) Hard to believe she would put herself through this again unless she 100% believed she would prevail. And how could she possibly predict this.

I wonder how either of us could really know? At minimum it seems to be a question. And might our disagreement on it really just be a reflection of how likely the possibility is for each of us?

Both, regardless, have the capacity to ruin lives. Whether it's better to be victimized or thought a monster by the world seems like a fundamentally unanswerable question.

The last decade or two have shown that going down swinging is sometimes the only option. Many public figures (we might even be thinking of the same ones right now) have gotten a lot of mileage out of insisting, against all facts or reason, that they were somehow cheated. It doesn't usually work in the sense of endearing them to most people, but it does seem moderately successful as a way to keep diehard supporters on their side.

I think that both are equally terrible in their own ways, honestly.

When I was like 22 and a paraprofessional, I was working with a student alone in a classroom when he turned to me and said, "I'm going to tell my dad that you hit me."

It was probably one of the worst moments of my professional career. I would never touch a student in anger (or in any inappropriate way), but in that moment I wasn't even thinking rationally. Because how do you disprove something that didn't happen, especially when there are no witnesses? It literally rewired my brain and I make it a point to not be alone in a room with a student unless we are in full view of one of the security cameras. And that wasn't even an accusation that officially got made.

Now, on the flip side, it would also be awful to not be believed--and I actually think that this is a more common experience. My friend's husband was on a jury in a rape case. Two college students. And even though the whole jury agreed that they were pretty sure that the accused rapist had lied repeatedly on the stand (and specifically that he'd lied in testifying that he'd asked her if she wanted to have sex and she had said yes), they also asserted that her going into his dorm room "proved" that she wanted to have sex. Despite her testimony. Despite the fact that she'd immediately sought medical treatment after their encounter. Despite the fact that there was no hint that she would have any reason to make the accusation out of any anger or malice. He was acquitted. I can't imagine how she felt and how she continues to feel whenever she thinks of that or hears his name.

So yeah. Both stink. And both are things that would fundamentally change your life.

Heh.

Yep. I know someone who had a similar experience, a teacher, accusations by a female student, hearings and a suspension. He wasn't back on the job until the student subsequently confessed to having fabricated the story and realized that she could not sustain the lie indefinitely. She had been incredibly stupid and hadn't foreseen the damage that her accusation would cause. While he was vindicated, it wasn't until enduring some months of being a pariah for something he didn't do.

This reminded me of a strange story about something that happened a few years ago. Hubby and I were sitting in the car in a Walmart parking lot when the kid who collects the shopping carts pulled a cart between our car and the car next to us, and he scratched the side of our car.

We immediately stopped the kid and pointed out the scratch to him, but he just said "sorry", turned his back to us, and walked away. We went inside to talk to the manager about it. When we got inside, we saw the kid who hit our car, and we told him that we wanted him to come with us to the manager's office. He started to agree, but then a young woman who was with him started to yell at us, saying that he "didn't do nothing" to our car.

We waited about 30 minutes for the manager to watch the security video, and when she came back, she admitted that she saw the incident on the video, but then she added that the store got an anonymous phone call from a woman who claimed that she "saw him NOT hit our car", and she was calling to make sure that he didn't get blamed for it.

We said that nobody would have any reason to call and claim that it didn't happen because how would she even know that there was a complaint about him unless she was inside the store when we confronted him. Who calls to say that they saw something NOT happen??? Even the manager knew that she was lying, and she suspected that the woman was his girlfriend calling to protect him.

It took almost a month, but Walmart eventually paid for the car repair.

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I agreed with your last paragraph and had nothing to add. Didn't mean anything tricky by omitting it.

I never dismissed his history of violence it just never reached a level of holy shit this is one violent dude, in my opinion. In 40 years in the public eye Johnny has trashed a hotel room (not a big deal), had some paparazzi roughed up (I'm taking your word on that but couldn't have been that big of a deal if he didn't go to jail or did he?) and had arguments with his wife (not a big deal). Getting mad and arguing is a pretty normal thing. People sometimes yell and slam things when they get angry. Some, like Amber, throw things. Spouses argue. It doesn't mean they're gonna sexually abuse you or break your nose. That's extreme. I just can't see the line connecting what Johnny has done in his past to what Amber accused him of doing. That's an Olympic triple jump leap right there.

The thing that gets me about people like Amber and Jussie, they're in the same boat in my opinion, is they take very serious, legitimate issues (in these cases - abuse, racism, homophobia) and they make up stories for personal gain. They're selfish pricks who diminish the causes they claim to be fighting for. There's enough real stuff out there that you don't need to make anything up. Use your celebrity to amplify the cases that you think need to be heard. Help somebody who is a victim. Don't try to make money off of it. It's disgusting. These frauds had their day in court and lost. They are liars and I have zero sympathy for people like them.

I'd like to learn more about why people on here feel like Johnny Depp prevailing against these allegations, arguably justifiably based on the evidence presented and the verdict, is a setback for the MeToo movement and makes it less likely for women who have legitimately been abused to be believed. I agree this would be a legitimate issue to be concerned about, but I don't think this will be a likely consequence for most people. What is the theory under which you are operating, what is your line of thinking that makes this seem true for you? What evidence do you have that this is likely to occur? Speaking for myself, and many other people that I know, Amber Heard falsely accusing Johnny Depp of domestic violence, and then him winning a defamation suit against her due to that, does not have any bearing whatsoever on whether or not I would believe that any other woman had been abused. I am still inclined to believe that anyone who is alleging they have been abused is likely telling the truth. I would still need to weigh the evidence, as well as the credibility of the person, and the specifics of the allegations, but, that is exactly the same process that I would have used before this verdict as well. To me, it seems like the vast majority of Americans would do that. I acknowledge that there may be a certain minority of Americans, both men and women, whose default view may be that women who accuse men of domestic violence are often lying, and also that those who accuse celebrities of abuse are motivated by their own agenda, but I think those people had that pre-existing bias before this trial, and they will continue to have it after this trial. I think those people have an issue, and need to re-evaluate their biases, but that this trial is not affecting those biases one way or another. I can think of no logical reason, or point to any traceable evidence, that this trial will convert those who would have been inclined to be fair-minded in evaluating these claims before this trial, and who may have been inclined to take these allegations seriously, to the opposite extreme because of this case. If you disagree, why do you think that will happen?

It's not the verdict itself that is an issue, and I think that's the misconception.

The issue is twofold: first, it's the way that some people immediately leapt to Depp's defense (not in a "let's wait for the facts" way, but in a "he's hot and I like him, so she must be a lying whore" way). That immediate, hateful backlash was chilling to watch, independent of what we later learned about Heard and their dynamic. Like I posted earlier, that kind of backlash often happens against women (or anyone) who makes an accusation against someone who is popular. My sister reported an incident of child abuse against a popular teacher (who was later found guilty of it in court) and was on the receiving end of texts calling her a "f*cking b*tch" and the like from her co-workers. One of my co-workers reported another teacher (which, BTW, was her LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY due to what she witnessed) and I was so disappointed in how many of my co-workers gave her the cold shoulder and made nasty remarks when she was clearly in the right. Just because the person she reported is one of the most popular teachers in our school.

Secondly, while about 75% of the commentary I've seen has been specific to the case itself (ie just talking about Heard and Depp), I'd say that about a quarter of what I've seen have been broad statements about how this "just goes to show" that most accusations by women are made up to get leverage, pushing the idea that false accusations are the norm. While I think (and hope!) that this is just a very vocal minority, if I were in a position of deciding whether or not to report abuse, it might make me more worried about whether I would be believed or not.

I think that it's the first one that is most concerning. It's been a protracted, brutal demonstration of what people will say about you if they don't believe you---and unfortunately that's something that exists independently of whether you are telling the truth or not. A lot of people (and I know two different rape victims and one victim of serious emotional abuse) are deterred from reporting/accusing because they don't need that harassment/stress on top of the trauma they've already dealt with.

EDIT: I do want to add that obviously it is hard to quantify what (if any) impact this has. My examples are all anecdotal, and I get that they aren't scientific. I'm just explaining why people are worried. Again: I had a student who turned into a die-hard Depp supporter, and when pressed as to why her answers were "He's hot" and "He was in Pirates of the Caribbean."

But I didn't say you couldn't believe it was "very important." I said that thinking of it as a net negative...

is tantamount to saying the truth matters less than this short-term win.

This is inherent in calling it a "net negative" at all. And as far as I can see none of the following...

...is at odds with this. You are describing the position in question, but it's perfectly consistent with how I'm representing it. Just as how, in a previous post, you described the downsides and knock-on effects of a false accusation, even though I hadn't denied their existence, but was instead talking about how we balance those things against the truth.

A lot of these responses are framed as (or, in this case, even specifically designated as!) disagreement, even though they don't appear to disagree with what they're responding to, that I can see. Which is another reason I keep talking about signaling and tribalism: because I often get back responses that feel like pushback, even if they don't dispute anything.

I'm not sure what "meant to be" means. If you mean that's what it should be, I agree, though even then I find it pretty reductive. I have personally heard a disturbing number of people say things completely omitting the nuance you're talking about, just as I'm sure you've heard the inverse.

Increasingly it seems to me that people's cultural and political inclinations are based around which things they decide are exceptions, and which are emblematic. Which is a problem when it's so, so easy to find thousands of examples of any extreme position you want. Confirmation bias has literally never been easier.

I guess it's better without the "all," but believe <half of the people in existence> seems like a fundamentally unserious thing to say. "Take allegations seriously" sounds closer to the mark, but it isn't pithy enough to be a slogan, I guess. And that's my point: if someone wants to engage in bumper-sticker rhetoric that strips the nuance out of an inherently nuanced and difficult issue, they really only have themselves to blame when one big public example is treated like some kind of slam dunk refutation for the whole idea. This is the rhetorical bed we (and by we, I mean basically everybody, not a particular side) have made.

There are a million ways to say things, and even more orders in which to say them. How and when things are said give us an idea of their priorities and their principles. I'm sure you've seen people who seemed to side with Depp reflexively, and I imagine this changed the probability, in your mind, of whether they really cared about abuse allegations as much as they should. Similarly, when I see people reflexively pushing back or conspicuously withholding certain natural reactions, I naturally wonder whether they value the truth as much as they should, or whether they have trained themselves to think, before all else, "which side gets to put one up on the scoreboard here?"

I'm curious, where is it that you're encountering this 25% of people who've been making these broad statements about false accusations? I'm by no means saying that you're lying about that, but I can't recall personally encountering that at all in regards to this case - whether on MoFo, in real life, on Reddit, or elsewhere on the internet. I have encountered a few people who rabidly and blindly claim that Depp is an abuser and Heard is a victim, despite all the evidence, but none of what you're saying.

What I've encountered instead have been people who initially believed Heard but then changed their minds when the evidence came out and people who were inclined to support Depp but were open to the possibility that the accusations were true, then became much more vocal in their support of him when the evidence came to light.

How old is this student? Kids and teens tend not to be too bright when it comes to things like this so you really shouldn't allow their opinion to hold any weight, IMO.

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Yup, same here, even in the legal circles (appallingly)!

Indeed. Totally with you on all of the above.

I have, out of (morbid) professional interest, been following the trial pretty much non-stop. As someone who has actually worked in the legal sector for years, I would agree with Yoda that the immediate “truth” in any trial matters far more than the “message” an outcome of the trial sends. Just think in a proper hard sci-fi way what the alternative would be. (“We decide legal cases to make a point.”)

I had a client last year (the case led me to have a mini breakdown and quit that job and the sector itself, pretty much) that was in RCJ (London High Court) litigation against a lawyer that leaked info about him (the client, said lawyer’s at the time and mine last year) to regulators, leading regulators to launch a corruption probe and eventually inflict unimaginable financial damage on the client, in turn eventually leading the client to be kicked out of the LSE off the back of financial losses brought on by the reputational damage.

Now, the lawyer in court and prior to the lawsuit being filed said that he leaked the info about the crimes because he felt it was “his moral duty to do so”. Needless to say, ample evidence soon showed that he more or less leaked it out of his own contempt for the client, who to him were, “These stupid pathetic foreign ****s with their thick accents and dirty fingers” (more or less verbatim).

Spoiler alert: lawyer lost case.

To me, there’s two ways of looking at it. To adopt your approach, Takoma, would (I believe) be to say, “Well, it’s a fantastic precedent, because who would want a world in which YOUR LAWYER WHO YOU PAY MILLIONS in fees can leak info on you to get you shut down”. It’s a great outcome that the guy went to jail. That is an approach that I personally appreciate.

Then there’s the other side: the lawyer discovered that the company was involved in, well, the sort of stuff of Stieg Larsen’s nightmares. If you were a mother of a child, and blah, blah, blah, would you want your child to grow up in a world where a company could be doing this kind of shit with their lawyer’s full knowledge (backing?) and get away with it without any authorities being alerted? Or would you want somebody to have a chance to do something/alert someone? I see that side too, but ultimately, that’s not good enough to violate a basic legal principle like legal professional privilege. Because violating that principle would wreak unimaginable havoc on the system.

If we approached the case entirely like that, i.e. assessing the hypothetical outcome on future cases, we would have vindicated the leaking lawyer, as such setting a precedent that, basically, legal professional privilege doesn’t exist. This (and ruling that Depp is guilty) would also be a precedent! And my client would have lost.

Some will say my case example isn’t entirely relevant, but I would say that I would find a legal system where it was acceptable to acquit my client’s leaker for the “greater good” of potential future trafficking victims and whatnot to be Orwellian and profoundly creepy.

On a different note, the student who had a crush on Hitler. First of all, she’s far from alone: from Unity Mitford, who was a teenage British aristo from one of the most reputable families in the country, to Eva Braun etc, we know that for whatever reason, Hitler had magnetism and a clear personal appeal for young women (and apparently still does). That setting aside the broad topic of young women liking “bad boys”.

So the student likes bad boys to perhaps a slightly greater degree than your average teenager. Johnny Depp has always cultivated a bad boy persona, so it’s not surprising that others/fans will extrapolate that role into him now more than ever. I feel like the issue is way, way, way more complex (as usual) than this sort of argument is willing to provide for. What does it mean to like/root for/be attracted to a “villain”? (A question I have grappled with for years).

Do you acknowledge it that he’s a villain and like him because of that (this was me, but from extended discussions with therapists/psychiatrists/English lit lecturers/fellow villain lovers, this is quite rare), or do you like the idea of being the only one to see the “truth” (e.g, Every “boring good feminist person was rooting for Amber but I was more perceptive, I root for Johnny!”)? And kids love being the only ones to see the truth of xyz. Just look at all the awful YA fiction out there.

So I had to put myself in an internet time-out for a few days because I realized that I was having WAY too personal of a reaction to this case and the discussions/memes/coverage around it. I took a step back, realized that I had not fully come to grips with some anxiety/anger/depression I had around four incidents of trying to report abuse taking place related to my students and one incident of a parent making a false accusation against me in the last two years.

In effect, I think I need to recuse myself, because even having tried to look at things at a distance from my own (still raw, apparently!) emotions, I don't think it's something I can discuss all that rationally. I'm happy to respond to the two people below, but think this is probably where I need to get off the train on this one.

This post led to my ah-ha about how subjectively I was handling this. While it's accurate to say that about 25% of the comments I read were broad statements, that's 25% of the comments I read, which is to say that as I was skimming below the video I watched, these were the comments that were sticking out to me. While I couldn't find the video I'd watched, I read through the comment sections (to the tune of about 100 comments) of two different videos with a similar vibe, actually reading each comment and "sorting" them. While there were some comments that hurt to read (like women always get treated better by the justice system, that "all these women" make up lies to ruin men, laughing at the idea that slamming things and yelling is abuse), your characterization is the correct one. The "negative" comments were few and very far between.

I apologize for generalizing about something that was obviously a very "filtered" and subjective version of the discussion. It was my experience, if that makes sense, but it was a very skewed one because of where my head is at regarding domestic abuse issues. I appreciate the kindness of your post in calling this out.

I'll just say one more time that I'm not saying that I wanted the verdict to be different, nor did I want anyone on the jury thinking about the "message" more than the facts. Obviously the truth prevailing is the most important thing in a trial and in a democracy at large.

But the outcome of a trial extends beyond the trial itself and the people involved. Part of what was interesting about reading through the comments was thinking about the impact of this trial in a larger sense. Positive things like denting the stigma around men who are victims of abuse, or seeing someone have the opportunity to fight back against false accusations. Negative things like the quick willingness to treat a trial centered on domestic abuse like a joke, or the extreme taking sides (either side).

In the long run, will this case help more people to access the justice system and have fair outcomes? Maybe. Is there a chance it could deter people from filing charges or linger unfairly in the minds of people weighing other abuse claims? Also maybe. For me, the idea of the "net outcome" of this case has to do with whether it ultimately adds to or detracts from the number of people who get fair and equitable access to the justice system.

i wonder if netflix and other subscribtions going to delete amber heard movies like they did with will
smith?

That’s horrible. I very often have intensely personal reactions to abstract things. I guess that’s just how my brain is wired. And I guess the subject is such where there’s not really very much to say that hasn’t been said before.

There was some chatter this week that Depp would waive the $10,000,000 awarded to him against Heard. He won his case, it was not about the money, apparently, & this sure would be a gracious thing to do.