Amber Heard testifies that Johnny Depp physically abused her

Actress Amber Heard on Wednesday held back tears as she testified to a jury about the first time that her ex-husband Johnny Depp allegedly slapped her, taking the stand in the ongoing defamation trial brought against her.

Heard alleges that Depp physically abused her throughout much of their five-year relationship, testifying that when they began dating in 2011, he slapped her across the face multiple times after she laughed at one of his tattoos because she thought he was making a joke.

“You think it’s funny, bitch?” Heard says Depp said to her. 

“I wish so much he had said he was joking,” Heard remembered. “I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know how to react.”

Heard’s testimony does not come as a surprise to those who watched their tumultuous relationship unravel. Photographed with a black eye in May 2016 — the same day she obtained a restraining order against Depp — public outrage erupted against Depp. 

Depp is suing Heard for $50 million, alleging she harmed his reputation by publishing an op-ed in 2018 about speaking up against domestic violence, two years after they got divorced. Depp’s lawyers argue that while Depp wasn’t named in the article, it was clear who she was referring to.

“I felt butterflies, I couldn’t see straight practically, I was head over heels in love,” Heard said of their early relationship.

Heard described Depp as “overly generous” with extravagant gifts, such as a horse, and extremely complementary. His relationship with her family was something she never dreamt of, saying the early days were like “magic.”

But as the months went on, the mask came off, Heard said. Depp began making demeaning comments about her outfit choices and derogatory comments about her career as an actress in Hollywood, saying she felt “dirty.”

“I tried to not talk about auditions because it would change the mood so dramatically,” Heard said. “He would make these comments that I was whoring myself out but do so in the context of me acting.”

Heard’s first witness, psychologist Dawn Hughes, described these patterns on the stand Tuesday, saying that “love bombing” through gifts is common after men have an abusive episode. 

Women also tend to stay with abusive men, Hughes said, with “love and normalcy” common in oftentimes violent relationships. One of the reasons why Heard said she stayed with Depp was because she believed he would eventually stop hitting her.

Heard said Depp told her once that he’d rather cut his hand off before he laid it on her again.

When Depp testified over the course of four days, Heard’s lawyers questioned him about his history of substance abuse, with Heard now testifying he would lie about his sobriety.

“And he expressed to me so many times when he was in that period of getting clean and sober, ‘You saved my life. Baby girl, you saved my life.’ Everyone else is saying that to me, and I believed it,” Heard said, in addition to graphically detailing how he performed a cavity search on her because he thought she stole his cocaine.

Heard is countersuing Depp for $100 million, alleging that his team harmed her reputation by calling her a liar and discrediting her following the op-ed.