Amber ‘rape lies’
Heard ‘stole details of sex attack on PA so she could smear Depp’
AMBER heard was accused in court yesterday of ‘stealing’ details of her hollywood PA’s rape and ‘twisting’ them into a story to attack Johnny Depp. the actress’s former assistant Kate James branded her a liar who would ‘throw anyone under a bus if it meant saving her own skin’.
She said Depp’s ex-wife – who alleges 14 instances of domestic violence, which he denies – should not present herself as a survivor of such abuse if she was ‘not one’.
Miss James, who worked as miss heard’s PA from 2012 to 2015 until she was fired, was testifying by video link in the high Court as a witness for Depp in his libel trial against the Sun, which called him a ‘wife beater’.
She told mr Justice nicol she was giving evidence because ‘I’m a sexual violence survivor and it’s very, very serious to take that stance if you’re not one, and I am one, and that’s the reason I am here, because I take offence’.
She said: ‘When I was 26 years old and travelling in Brazil, I was violently raped by an unknown male at machete point, having been woken by the perpetrator whilst sleeping alone in my dwelling. ‘this ordeal went on for five to six hours and I narrowly escaped with my life. this torturous experience of such extreme sexual violence has haunted me ever since and permanently changed the trajectory of my life to this day.’
She said when miss heard found out about her ordeal, she ‘summoned me to her office’ and asked her about it.
Miss James told the court how last month she saw documents for the libel case. ‘ As I perused the documents, much to my utter shock and dismay, I discovered miss heard had in fact stolen my sexual violence conversation with her and twisted it into her own story to benefit herself,’ she said. ‘this of course caused me extreme distress and outrage that she would dare to attempt to use the most harrowing experience of my life as her own narrative.’
Miss James said that when she worked for miss heard she went to the couple’s mansion almost every day and ‘ never saw any sign’ of the fights described by miss heard. She said: ‘I never once saw any bruising, swelling, or any evidence of what could have resulted from violence.’ She described Depp as ‘always calm and quite shy’. She also claimed ‘Amber would drink vast quantities of red wine each night’. At the same time, she added, ‘ she would ask me to buy Johnny nonalcoholic beer as that’s all she would allow him to drink’. drank miss the James wine said: because ‘I knew in she the morning I would see the empty bottles and I would receive drunken text messages – incoherent, abusive text messages – between 2am and 4am on an almost daily basis.’
She also referred to the private jet flight from Boston to Los Angeles in may 2014 on which miss heard alleges that an alcohol and drugfuelled Depp slapped and kicked her before passing out in the toilet. the Sun’s QC Sasha Wass said miss heard had ‘ checked into a hotel’ after the ordeal.
But miss James, 52, said: ‘I don’t know why, because she had an apartment. She went to the Chateau [ hotel] with four of her friends and basically had a pool party all day.’ When miss Wass suggested they were comforting miss heard, the PA replied: ‘they were drinking and swimming and sunbathing and having fun.’
In a written statement to the court, miss James, an Australian, also discussed the incident in which the Depps smuggled their teacup Yorkshire terriers Boo and Pistol into her homeland in their private jet. they were fined in Australia for illegally flying in their pets in breach of strict quarantine rules when Depp was filming Pirates of the Caribbean there in 2015. ‘She deliberately smuggled the dogs into Australia,’ said miss James. ‘As in several circumstances I observed, it was as if she felt she was above the law.’ She added she was devastated when she read in a newspaper that miss heard had blamed her in court. She said: ‘It was a complete lie. She did not care about throwing anyone under a bus if it meant saving her own skin.’
‘Utter shock and dismay’