Amber Heard claimed Johnny Depp was abusive to his exes but Winona Ryder defended him: 'He was a caring guy'
After Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for $50 million, claiming she defamed him by writing an op-ed in 2016 about domestic violence, her lawyers accused him of being abusive toward his former partners.
After presenting the 'Pirates of the Carribean' actor's medical records before the court to show his history of substance and alcohol abuse, which they claimed fueled his alleged abusive behavior toward Heard, the 'Aquaman' actress' attorneys also insisted on submitting evidence before the judge to allow them to prove that Depp might have been violent towards past partners.
“He says he is not a perpetrator of domestic violence. So we have requested documents relating to Mr Depp's commission of domestic violence against another romantic partner,” Heard’s lawyer Ben Rottenborn said, reported Daily Mail.
Depp's camp tried to get the claims dismissed by suggesting that the Heard team's efforts to bring the actor's struggles with alcoholism and drugs were part of a "fishing expedition" to embarrass and "harass" him. They added that the claims were irrelevant.
When the judge asked why Depp had claimed in his lawsuit that he had never been domestically violent towards anyone, his lawyer replied, “Mr Depp understood that this case, since the public op-ed, is going to be in the public press. And so it's important for him to say that."
He added that their team had submitted enough evidence to prove that Heard was the one who had incited violence against Depp and not the other way around.
"Having been sued for defamation her notorious abuse hoax, Amber Heard’s #TimesUp lawyer doesn’t waste any time trying to prove the unprovable, or dispute the mountain of evidence showing her fraud," the lawyer said. "Instead, they do what the guilty always do, compounding the original crime with new false abuse allegations and other smearing innuendo."
Despite Depp's attempts to dismiss the allegations, the judge sided with Heard.
It is important to note that in the past all of Depp's exes, including Winona Ryder, Vanessa Paradis and Lori Anne Allison, have defended him against the allegations, claiming that they didn’t experience any abuse from him during their respective relationships. In fact, they found him “sensitive” and “loving.”
“In all the years I have known Johnny, he has never been physically abusive with me and this looks nothing like the man I live with for 14 wonderful years,” Paradis wrote, while Ryder said that when she was with Depp, he was a “good, loving, caring guy who is very, very protective of the people that he loves.”
