Law&Crime Sidebar - Amber Heard’s Loss to Johnny Depp Contributes to Silence from Abuse Victims: Women's Rights Groups

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Over 130 people from various women's right organization signed an open letter supporting Amber Heard, denouncing the misuse of defamation lawsuits to silence abuse victims. The Law&Crime Network's Angenette Levy and former prosecutor Melba Pearson have the latest.GUEST:Melba Pearson: https://twitter.com/ResLegalDivaLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that will

keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Welcome back to Sidebar here on Law and Crime. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Well, millions of people around the world watch the defamation trial between actors, Johnny Debt, and Amber Heard earlier this year, it was just quite a spectacle. It was very interesting, though, and Depp won all of his claims against his ex-wife for defamation. The jury awarded him $10.35 million in damages. Heard won one of her claims against Depp and was awarded $2 million in damages.

They are both appealing those judgments. Now a group of feminists and feminist organizations have written an open letter supporting Amber Heard and saying, she's been vilified and continues to be harassed in the wake of the trial and the jury's verdict. So we thought we should talk about this open letter and the claims being made in it. Joining me to do so is Melba Pearson. She is a former prosecutor in Florida. Melba, welcome back to Sidebar. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me, Anjanet. Let's start right now with a little bit of an excerpt of this open letter that was posted on a website called amber openletter.com. Part of it reads, five months ago, the verdict in the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, deeply concerned many professionals in the fields of intimate partner and sexual violence. In our opinion, the Depp v. Heard verdict and continued discourse around it, indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of intimate partner and sexual violence and how survivors respond to it. So Melba, these organizations, and there are many of them, the National Organization for Women, a plethora of organizations signed this open letter.

And obviously they disagree with the verdict and they believe it was wrong and that Amber Heard was in the right and that her reactions to some of the things that were going on on the audio tapes and things like that were normal and natural. So what is your take on this open letter? Yeah. So there was a lot of pressure with regards to a lot of these feminist groups because during the time of the trial and in the time just before it, they came under fire because they weren't very vocal with regards to this case. And so now I maybe as a result of the pressure or maybe as a result of having

had time to reflect on everything that's gone on, they've decided to raise their voice around this issue. What is very clear and you know, unfortunately I've even experienced this myself in doing some commentary around this case where even just talking about the legal concepts that are involved, you get this vitriol where, you know, folks are just like, you know, basically calling you everything but a child of God. It just because you're sharing a different viewpoint or high. highlighting a different concern. And some of those reactions and some of those statements are steeped in misogyny are steeped in the fact that, you know, some of the folks that are speaking out have deep hate for women, right? But there is, there are actual aspects that do need to be discussed here, right?

At the end of the day, domestic violence affects so many people in this country of all genders, of all races, of all ethnic backgrounds, financial backgrounds. And domestic violence looks different between couples. Not every single couple will have the same sort of behaviors that are involved. There are some commonalities, but not every domestic violence case looks the same. And I think that's what really got lost in this case and in this discussion. And I think it's interesting you brought up some of the things about misogyny. Part of this letter also reads, much of this harassment was fueled by disinformation, misogyny, bifobia, which is apparently having animus toward people who are bisexual and a monetized social media environment where a woman's allegations of domestic violence

and sexual assault were mocked for entertainment. I'm not going to lie to you, Melba. I mean, there were some of these TikTok videos and stuff like that. And I'm not a big TikTok person, but I would see them out there or some of the things on Twitter. And some of them were kind of they are not something I would ever put out there, even if I didn't disagree with somebody's account or thought they weren't being honest or something to that effect. I would never have put these things out there where they're kind of like reenacting what she claims happened to her with a sexual assault and things of that nature. So, but at the same time, I think it's interesting because there are a lot of female domestic violence victims who've been on Twitter and other

social media platforms who said that they believed Johnny Depp. And even Rihanna, the singer, she had a fashion show or Savage X Fenty fashion show. And she is a survivor of domestic. violence, and she invited Johnny Depp on. So there are people who obviously believe Amber Heard, but there are also people who believe Johnny Depp. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, again, on any issue, reasonable people can disagree with regards to how they perceive the evidence. That's why when we have trials, we have a jury of six people or 12 people, depending on the type of case, because everybody's going to view things differently, but of course, they will come to some final commonality. But remember, most of the people,

people that may be commenting on this didn't watch the trial from start to finish. They maybe saw excerpts here and there. They may be relying on a TikTok video in somebody's commentary, but they didn't necessarily see every single aspect of the evidence. And one other aspect that, again, gets lost in this is that, you know, as you mentioned at the top, Amber Hurd did win one of her claims and received $2 million. So that's not to say that there was an abuse or that Johnny Depp could, was never a victim. But clearly, the jury believes something about her account to award her $2 million.

There was some aspect that they found credible, which resulted in that verdict because they did not have to award her any money at all if they thought that she was completely lying. So that was, again, this is all very complicated because domestic violence involves people. And people can be complicated. People react differently to different things. A lot of people say objectively that, well, if I was in a domestic violence relationship, that would never happen because I would hit them and I would do XYZ ABC. Well, you don't know that until you're in that situation. And you don't know how you're going to react. And there are a lot of factors that play including finance, sometimes including children, including pets, because sometimes an abuser will

use the pet as leverage and threaten to harm the pet, which is something that, you know, the person is very bonded to and that's a way of attacking them. And sometimes there's that back and forth because of the underlying toxicity that's in that relationship. So all of those things come into play when you're trying to analyze and break down what exactly happened in a particular case, which makes these cases very challenging. As a former domestic violence prosecutor, you have to wait through all of those things to figure out what happened and be able to present the best case you can. And I do want to go back to just one thing that you brought up about the one claim that Amber heard won. She lost her two other claims, but won one. And

these were based on comments made by Johnny Depp's lawyer, Adam Waldman, where he basically said that Amber heard and her friends concocted a hoax and spilled wine on the floor on this one crucial night in their relationship where 911 was called. And he said that was all staged. So I would love for one or even two, just one juror to come out and explain to us, like how they reached these decisions. It would be really interesting to hear. You know, but as a former domestic violence prosecutor. And we talked about this last week with the Courtney Clenney story. And there's been a lot of controversy surrounding the Depp and Herd case about whether or not such a thing as mutual abuse. That's what their marriage counselor called it. She believed they were abusive to one another.

And then Amber Heard's team called an expert, Don Hughes, who said that that can't be possible. There's basically usually there's an aggressor and then a, you know, a subordinate or subservient person. in that relationship. But you said you believed that there could be mutual abuse. So explain that to me and whether or not in your viewing of the evidence at the trial, you believed this was a mutually abusive relationship. Sure. So when we talk about a mutual abusive situation, it's very nuanced. So you can't just say, oh, this was definitely mutual abuse and that's the end of it. You have to really dive into the facts because sometimes someone who is an abuser will say, well, you pushed me, so you started it, therefore, you know, you are equally as responsible as I am.

So that's a way of deflecting blame away from themselves and away from their actions, right? There's the concept of self-defense where basically if somebody, you know, pushes you and abuses you and you push them back in self-defense to be able to escape or whatever the case may be, that is not mutual abuse, right? So we have to be very careful with regards to the language and the nuance. But when I speak of mutual abuse, I think of an mutually toxic relationship where each of you will attack one another, harm one another, and it's not as necessarily a result of something that happened right at that moment, but it's just you're both in a very unhealthy place. The question is, is one of these parties trying to seek help and change their behavior? Does the person realize that what they're doing is unhealthy and that they need to seek help?

That, to me, is the big dividing factor. If you're not willing to seek help and you think there's absolutely nothing wrong of what you're doing, in all likelihood, you're probably the main aggressor and very problematic. And the person that is more likely to seek help often tends to be more of the victim slash survivor. So again, it's a very nuanced kind of idea. And I don't want folks to come away with thinking, you know, blanketly, that no one can ever have a situation where you have a primary aggressor and a constant victim. Sometimes it is much more fluid than one initially may think. So it doesn't have to just always be aggressor, reactor. It can be a little bit

of both. It sounds like you are, you believe that. Correct. I do believe that. I do believe that. That to me is what would be a toxic relationship. Yes. Well, Melba Pearson, a former prosecutor and she handled domestic violence cases. Thank you for coming on for your time. and your insight. It seems like people are just continuing to talk about this case. Obviously, the jury, the jury believed that Amber Heard made it up. I mean, they basically called her a liar, but then also found one count for her for the comments of Adam Waldman. So we appreciate you coming on to talk about this open letter. Thank you so much, Anjanet. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar Podcast. It is produced by Sam Goldberg and Logan Harris. Bobby Zoki is our

YouTube manager. Alyssa Fisher is our booking producer and Kira Bronson handles our social media. You can download and listen to Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcast. And of course, you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. I'm Ann Janette Levy, and we will see you next time. You can binge all episodes of this Law and Crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.