DEPP BATTERED AMBER 12 TIMES
Sensational celebrity libel trial ends in devastating 129-page ruling as judge labels film star a monster and a wife beater
JOHNNY Depp’s movie career is in ruins after a judge branded him a lying, cocaine-snorting, wife-beating ‘monster’.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star lost his £5million three-week libel trial, with the High Court ruling he battered Amber Heard a dozen times. Mr Justice Nicol threw out Depp’s defamation case against The Sun for calling him a wife beater – with the judge saying it was ‘substantially true’.
Last night the actor’s lawyers blasted the ruling as ‘perverse’ and ‘bewildering’, and vowed to appeal. But the newspaper hailed it as a triumph for domestic abuse victims and thanked Miss Heard for her courage in giving evidence.
During his four days in the witness box, Depp was forced to admit consuming vast quantities of illegal drugs and alcohol, while shocking text messages were read out including plots to ‘drown and burn his wife as a witch’. Mr Justice Nicol said Depp, 57, became a ‘monster’ when inebriated. He concluded he beat Miss Heard, 34, on 12 of the 14 times she alleged.
Last night PR guru Mark Borkowski said for the star to resume his career would be the equivalent of ‘climbing Everest without oxygen, barefoot and in his underpants’.
Here we examine the devastating ruling:
TERROR IN AUSTRALIA
In his excoriating 129-page ruling, Mr Justice nicol sided with Miss Heard at almost every turn.
The judge said Depp had put his wife ‘in fear of her life’ during a three-day rampage in their rented house in Australia, where he was filming a Pirates of the Caribbean film in March 2015.
He accepted Miss Heard’s account – including claims of sexual violence, which were detailed in a private session of the court – saying it ‘must have been terrifying’.
Miss Heard had told the court how Depp threatened to ‘slice up my face’ with a bottle before trashing their house with mashed potato, raw meat, blood and paint.
The star then scrawled messages to his wife in blood on lampshades, cushions, walls and a mirror using his cut finger as a paintbrush.
She said Depp – who had taken ten ecstasy tablets with whisky – had ripped her clothes and grabbed her breasts, choked her and slapped her and hurled her over a table tennis table.
She said the self-confessed alcoholic had pelted her with 30 bottles ‘like grenades’ after she complained about his drinking, which he described as her ‘ constant harping’.
Among the £130,000 worth of damage to the villa, Depp allegedly scrawled a penis onto a painting of a topless woman.
Mr Justice nicol concluded: ‘Taking all the evidence together, I accept that she was the victim of sustained and multiple assaults by Mr Depp in Australia. I accept her evidence of the nature of the assaults he committed against her.’ He dismissed Depp’s attempt to blame his wife for his finger being severed.
PHONE THROWING
One of Depp’s most powerful witnesses was a domestic violence-trained policewoman called to the couple’s Los Angeles penthouse, who told the High Court via videolink she had seen no injuries to Miss Heard’s face. Yet the judge questioned the reliability of LAPD officer Melissa Saenz by saying she had not taken any notes and had significantly overestimated the time she had spent in the apartment. The judge said he preferred the ‘contemporaneous’ evidence of Miss Heard’s friends about the ‘phone hurling’ assault of May 21, 2016, which left a red mark on her face.
Her best friend Raquel ‘Rocky’ Pennington said Miss Heard was yelling ‘Help, please call for help’ as Depp raged at her, while another friend, iO Tillett Wright, ‘heard Miss Heard yelp down the phone... and was sufficiently alarmed for her safety to call 911’.
Calling both friends ‘compelling’ witnesses, Mr Justice nicol backed the actress’s version of the events of May 21, 2016.
FLIGHT FROM HELL
On A private plane from Boston to LA, in May 2014, drug-addled Depp lashed out at his wife because he was jealous of her younger co-star James Franco.
In the witness box, Depp memorably denied being drunk or dabbling in ‘Peruvian marching powder’, before later apologising to the judge and saying he could now recall that indeed he had consumed cocaine, pills, whisky, two bottles of champagne, marijuana and Roxicodone painkillers.
But he still insisted he had been idly sketching in a notebook in his seat while his wife ‘harangued’ him, and had only ‘playfully tapped her on the bottom with his foot’.
Depp’s assistant Stephen Deuters backed up his boss. In his judgment, Mr Justice nicol branded them both liars, saying Mr Deuters’ loyalties were to his boss.
He accepted Miss Heard’s recollections of the flight, which were that Depp was blind drunk, pumped up with drugs, hurling ice cubes and vulgar obscenities at her, accusing her of ‘f***ing’ Franco on the set of her latest movie, slapping her and kicking her in the back ‘ like a raging monster’, before passing out in the aeroplane’s toilet and later being sick.
The judge highlighted a text message Mr Deuters had later sent Miss Heard saying: ‘When I told him he kicked you, he cried... It was disgusting. And he knows it’, and another sent by Depp to his wife which said: ‘I am sorry. I really don’t know why or what happened. But I will never do it again.’
ABUSED WITH BIRTHDAY FIZZ
DePP was late for Miss Heard’s 30th birthday party, in April 2016, then threw a bottle of champagne at her and shoved her to the floor several times before leaving a note reading: ‘ Happy F*****g Birthday’.
The ‘stressed’ actor had earlier been told by his financial advisers he had lost £500million, and had turned to cocaine, marijuana and alcohol.
Mr Justice nicol said: ‘He assaulted Miss Heard as he had done on previous occasions when he was stressed.’
TWO BLACK EYES
AMBeR Heard appeared on James Corden’s Late Late Show in December 2015 wearing scarlet lipstick and make-up to cover
bruises and two black eyes after raging Depp had slapped and headbutted her, pushed her onto their oak bed so hard it broke and ripped out clumps of her hair, the judge found. Mr Justice Nicol said: ‘ These assaults would have been extremely frightening. I accept that they put Miss Heard in fear of her life.’
He added that although a TV stylist, Samantha McMillen, had told the court she had not seen any injuries, this was because she saw Miss Heard after the cosmetics had been applied by makeup artist Melanie Inglessis. The judge also found Depp had assaulted Miss Heard three times in 2013 after she made a joke about his Winona Ryder tattoo; when he hit her so hard blood spattered on a wall; and at a trailer in Hicksville. In addition he struck her in 2014 in the Bahamas, and in 2015 at their LA apartment.
THE SOILED BED
THE judge also gave his verdict on what was dubbed ‘Poogate’ by Miss Heard and her friends – the mystery of who left excrement in the marital bed of their LA penthouse. The actor claimed he made up his mind to divorce after being informed about the faeces by a disgusted cleaner. He told the court he suspected it was left there by Miss Heard or one of her friends. His wife blamed it on their teacup Yorkshire terrier Boo who was unwell after it ate some of the superstar’s cannabis stash.
Mr Justice Nicol ruled the matter was ‘not even of significant relevance’, but added: ‘For what it is worth, I consider that it is unlikely that Miss Heard or one of her friends was responsible... Boo had an incomplete mastery of her bowels.’
PELTED DEPP WITH POTS AND PANS
IN a tape recording played in court, Miss Heard admitted ‘clocking’ Depp in the jaw and pelting him with pots, pans and vases.
The judge concluded that although Miss Heard ‘did sometimes throw pots and pans at Mr Depp’, it was ‘only to try and escape him’.
He said: ‘In my view no great weight is to be put on these alleged admissions by Miss Heard to aggressive violent behaviour.’
Depp’s lawyers said Miss Heard’s credibility was undermined by the time she lied when smuggling her pet dogs into Australia and was fined for breaching biosecurity laws.
They also said she lied to US Homeland Security about her assistant. But the judge rejected both arguments, saying neither episode ‘impinged on her credibility’.
The judge dismissed two allegations made by Miss Heard – that Depp was ‘violent towards’ her in December 2014 and ‘threw her around the room’ in November 2015 – but did not conclude she had been untruthful.
SHE’S NOT A GOLD DIGGER
MR Justice Nicol rejected Depp’s ‘gold digger’ claims about his ex-wife. The actor said Miss Heard had made recordings of him as an ‘insurance policy’, and that her abuse claims were ‘a hoax’.
But the judge said: ‘I do not accept this characterisation.’