Johnny Depp accuses Amber Heard of punching him
A court in London was shown a “pathetic” photo of Johnny Depp taken by ex-wife Amber Heard while the Pirates of the Caribbean star accused her of brutal domestic violence.
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Johnny Depp’s staffer labelled the star’s ex-wife Amber Heard a “sociopathic show pony” in explosive text messages read out during a London court case.
And the Pirates of the Caribbean Star called Heard a “c---” in a text message because she had accused him of drinking.
More details of the toxic relationship between the pair were revealed at London’s High Court on Tuesday morning Australian time as Depp, 57, sued The Sun for a 2018 article that described him as a “wife beater”.
The court was also shown a photograph of Depp passed out, with ice cream spilt all over his clothes, which was taken by Heard, 34, who received $10 million in their divorce settlement.
She took the photograph to show him how “pathetic” he was when he was using drugs on the day he was due to go into rehab.
Depp’s personal assistant Stephen Deuters gave evidence, where he was defending his boss of 16 years.
Sasha Wass, QC, for The Sun, quizzed Mr Deuters, who is now the European president of Depp’s production company, about his time as the actor’s personal assistant.
He denied that Depp was a heavy drug user and claimed that it was not common for the actor to be passed out because of substance abuse.
Deuters had claimed that he would not use bad language towards women, but then Ms Wass read out messages he had sent to Depp’s friend, the actor Paul Bettany, about Heard, 34.
“Sociopathic show pony. Machiavellian overlord,” Deuters’ message to Bettany said.
“Talentless c---. Good riddance to bad s---. Yes, I do mean Amber.”
Depp sent a text message to Deuters in August 2014 where he complained Heard had called him out for drinking.
“She has accused me of boozing!!! I told her no!!! She’s a c---!!!,” the text said.
“She’s keeps accusing me of (being) wasted on something else every night!!! Or sometimes she likes to make me look like an idiot for being stoned and smarter that she is … I’m so sick of it!!!”
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Deuters was on a private jet flight in 2014 where Heard accused Depp of kicking her and throwing ice at her during a drug-fuelled rage, which the actor denied.
The personal assistant told the court he had not seen anything but had later texted Heard about the alleged incident.
“He was appalled. When I told him he kicked you, he cried. It was disgusting. And he knows it,” the text from Deuters to Heard said.
Deuters said that he had used the word “kicked” because Heard has used it in her messages.
He said Depp had told him to sort out the problem with Heard and he wanted to avoid conflict.
“I always seek to mollify,” he said.
“I wasn’t comfortable in this position or sending these texts, all I said was to say what I thought people wanted to hear, to be quite honest.”
Deuters said that Heard was the abusive party in the relationship, not Depp.
“I knew that Ms Heard was the abuser in the relationship and I was appalled that she would behave in this way,” he said.
“She had subjected Mr Depp to years of abuse.”
The case continues.
DEPP TO HEARD: ‘YOU HAYMAKERED ME’
Earlier, Depp said Heard had “haymakered” him as he claimed that he was a domestic violence victim rather than a “wife beater”, a London court heard.
The actor also revealed his former managers had “taken” $932 million of his earnings, which he found out before a major argument with Heard.
On the stand for the fifth day in his libel case, Depp argued in court that Heard was accusing him of attacks that she had done to him in a “mirroring” pattern.
“It seemed like everything she would accuse me of was something that she had done to me, so I started to see this kind of pattern, a mirroring, and when she said that I was real taken aback, for sure,” he said.
The court was also told about how Heard had secretly recorded Depp and asked him about an incident where she alleged he headbutted her.
The recording also revealed that Depp had said Heard was violent to him.
“You f------ haymakered me, man,” he said, describing a type of wild punch.
He also told Heard that “you came around the bed to f------ start punching on me”.
Depp claimed he was unable to hit Heard during another argument because he was wearing a “dinosaur” cast on his hand.
He claimed the cast would have stopped him holding Heard with one hand and allegedly “punch her repeatedly” with the other.
Depp also said that he had endured complications from the treatment of his finger when he returned to the United States.
“I flew back from Australia to LA to have surgery on the finger and, at that time, they had put a pin in it, in the broken bone, the fractured bone, but to no avail,” the actor said.
He told the court he “ended up getting MRSA; it’s quite a painful disease”.
Depp’s barrister David Sherbourne took the floor in London’s High Court on Monday night Australian time as part of the actor’s libel case against The Sun newspaper.
He tried to undermine the case laid out by Sasha Wass, QC, for The Sun, which claimed it had evidence of 14 separate domestic violence allegations.
Depp was suing the newspaper for an article written by executive editor Dan Wootton, who broke the news of Prince Harry and Meghan’s departure from the royal family earlier this year.
Depp has denied claims that he “destroyed” a Gold Coast apartment during a “drug-fuelled” rampage where his finger was severed.
He claimed that Heard had severed his finger with a vodka bottle, which she denies.
That argument on Heard’s 30th birthday in 2016 started after Depp had met with a new manager who had told him he had lost $927 million.
“Since Pirates (Of The Caribbean) 2 and 3, I had – and this is ludicrous to have to state, it’s quite embarrassing – apparently I had made $US650 million ($A932 million) and when I sacked them, for the right reasons, I had not only lost $650 million, but I was $US100 million in the hole because they (the previous business managers) had not paid the government my taxes for 17 years,” he said.
Originally published as Johnny Depp accuses Amber Heard of punching him