Let's Talk About The Silence and Victim Blaming Surrounding Johnny Depp

It has now been over a week since audio of Amber Heard admitting to being physically abusive towards her ex-husband Johnny Deep was released and… not much has changed.

When I say that, I’m not referring to public response because collectively, the public has been showing support for the actor and apologizing for “cancelling” him back in 2016. No, what I am referring to is the media and their complete silence on the topic and/or blatant victim blaming of Johnny Depp in bringing up a “lack of context” of the conversation or, using the “it must’ve been mutual abuse” argument that, quite frankly, is infuriating.

Look, I get it. So many major entertainment outlets spent the last three years supporting Amber Heard and convincing the public as to why they should be avoiding anything Johnny Depp has ever done or will be doing in the future. They’ve spent three years practising completely biased “journalism” in the name of the Me Too Movement and [fake] feminism, so it must be embarrassing to now have to make a complete U-turn and apologize for likely being wrong in their reporting. The thing is, no one cares about their embarrassment.

The fact of the matter is, every single one of those outlets should be putting their pride aside and report the facts that have recently come to light. Instead, they are using cop-out arguments and victim-blaming tactics to keep Johnny Depp looking like an abuser when in reality, it’s looking like that is far from the truth. Many have even gone as far as switching the roles of what we hear in the audio, making Heard out to be the one who acted in self-defense, when that sounds far from the truth.

Audio 1:

Throughout the audio we hear Amber complaining about how Johnny would “split whenever there was a fight”. Meaning, he would physically leave the room before things escalated. She then goes on to state how him doing this “only perpetuated the fight further.” So, it made her angrier when he would leave instead of choosing to fight with her, something she saw as him not fighting for her.

In that same audio we hear her explain,

“I can’t promise I won't get physical again. I'm human and sometimes I just get so mad, I lose it.”

She admits to, and now this is very important, starting physical fights. She admits to lying to their neighbour, when she had told him she hadn’t hit Johnny. She then goes on to mock Johnny by telling him,

"You go f*cking jerk...Go jerk him off!"

At this point, we hear her become frantic and begin spewing homophobic rhetoric by insinuating that just because Johnny seeks help after being hit, in the form of his male neighbour, that clearly means they should sleep together. Prior to that, she also makes fun of Johnny for getting help, with her "come save me" comment.

Gaslighting is also prominent in the audio when Amber tries to convince Johnny that he wasn't actually punched.

“I was hitting you..it was not punching you."

"I was f*cking hitting you. I don't know what the motion of my actual hand was but you're fine! I did not hurt you! I did not punch you!"

So... she doesn't remember how exactly she had her hand, but can insist that she wasn't punching him? Also, no one can tell another person if they are hurt. Only the one being hit can say how they felt, both physically and emotionally.

On Johnny’s part, he pleads with her that he wants peace in their marriage.

“If things get physical, we need to separate.”

"I don't wanna f*cking fight."

Now, he does admit to throwing something at her at one point but explains that it only happened because she had thrown a can at his face, He also admits to pushing her but again, it only happened because Amber began attacking him. Johnny was acting in self-defense. To be clear, self-defense does not equal mutual abuse. A fact that media already knows since they’ve gone and rewrote the script to make it seem as though Johnny was the instigator and Amber was the one acting in self-defense and of course in that context, it just couldn’t be mutual abuse because it’s a woman defending herself, right?

Now, call me what you want but, I don’t see how any of the above mentioned needs any more context than what we have. Sure, we don't know what the arguments were about but just the fact that she admits to starting physical fights, in my opinion, should tell everyone that Johnny didn’t instigate the fights that turned physical. It should leave people asking, if Johnny would in fact split during fights (her words, not mine), then how exactly did he manage to abuse her all those times she claimed he had? I mean, last I checked, Johnny didn’t have Inspector Gadget arms. It definitely leaves one to question the validity of her stories. She also claimed once that he threw a chair at her... in an airplane... during a flight. Make of that what you will.

That’s of course not to say Johnny is a saint who can do no wrong. Like everyone else, the man has his faults, faults that he has been open about in the past and has never tried to erase them in order to paint himself as an angel. It's the same reason why he didn't want anything about this ongoing trial to be kept private. Simply put, he has nothing to hide. All I’m saying is, domestic abuse is not one of them.

Audio 2:

In this second audio, we hear the most damning piece of the puzzle that is textbook abuse behaviour. Amber challenging Johnny to publicly state how he was a victim of domestic violence.

"Tell them. 'I, Johnny Depp... a man...I'm a victim too of domestic violence !' ...and see how many people believe or side with you."

She challenges him and mocks the notion of him getting up on a stand and telling people he was abused by his wife. The words are not only chilling but also angering because we hear a woman using her gender and the movement of feminism to protect herself. She used them both to get away with abuse. Sort of like when she used her bisexualty and gender to explain away her 2009 arrest for abusing her then girlfriend, by calling the arresting officer homophobic only for that officer to come out as gay, herself.

If reading that doesn't make you feel even a bit angry, then I don’t know what to tell you.

At the end of the day, what the media is doing to Johnny Depp now is not only continuing their emotional and verbal abuse on the actor, but they are now escalating to victim-blaming by insinuating that everything that happened to him, he deserved just for being a man. They are shifting narratives, rewriting the script and STILL attempting to paint Depp as the villain in this story. The fact also remains that the media doesn't "need more context", they're just saying they do to avoid facing the reality right in front of them.

The question stands: How long are you going to allow them to do this to a victim of abuse?