Depp’s bodyguard says Heard abused the actor

Johnny Depp’s security chief has alleged that Amber Heard physically abused Depp during the couple’s tempestuous marriage, giving testimony to support Depp's libel suit against a British tabloid that accused him of assaulting his former spouse.

Lawyers also released statements from two of Depp’s former romantic partners, Winona Ryder and Vanessa Paradis, who said they could not reconcile Heard’s accusations of violence with the kind and loving man they knew. Depp is suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and the paper's executive editor, Dan Wootton, over an April 2018 article that called him a “wife-beater.” He strongly denies abusing Heard.

In a written witness statement released as he appeared in court Thursday, security officer Sean Bett said that “throughout the course of Mr. Depp and Ms. Heard's relationship, Ms. Heard was verbally and physically abusive towards Mr. Depp”. “On many occasions, I witnessed her shout at Mr. Depp. I was also told by Mr. Depp on multiple occasions that Ms. Heard had physically abused him,” he said.

Bett, a former Los Angeles sheriff's deputy who has worked for Depp for a decade, said he regularly had to remove the Pirates of the Caribbean star from bad situations when Heard was in an “abusive mood”. “Ms. Heard often behaved in this way when she had been drinking. I learnt quickly to recognise the signs, so that we were able to leave the situation before it escalated further,” he said. —PTI