Depp-Heard trial condemns hashtag justice to the gutter

Amber Heard appears to be a deeply unstable person who routinely secretly recorded her husband and was prone to violence of her own.

It is often easy to see where social movements begin, though slightly harder to discern where they end. So it is with MeToo, a movement that may have sputtered to an end in a Virginia courtroom this week.

The MeToo movement began in 2017 with the overdue revelations about Harvey Weinstein. From there it spilt across the entertainment industry, with campaigners trying to roll it out across society as a whole. A certain type of predatory male was believed to be overdue for a comeuppance. Though in general, if you are fighting for the rights of women then Hollywood, the place that invented the term “casting couch”, may prove an imperfect field of battle.

Yet for a long while the movement rolled on unhindered. There was a fever in the air.

Men in a range of industries had their careers destroyed, sometimes simply by being named on crowdsourced Google spreadsheets (“Shitty media men”) or for having a bad date (Aziz Ansari). Few people seemed to want to locate any brakes on the movement, even as it veered wildly into overreach. “Believe all women” was one of the rallying cries of the moment. A claim as deranging and unhelpful as it would be to insist “Believe all men”.

It was into this storm that Amber Heard threw herself in 2018 with an opinion piece in The Washington Post. In it she said she had become “a public figure representing domestic abuse”. Though she did not name her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, in the piece, it seemed clear who she was referring to.

And it is on the basis of those relatively careful, blurry words that the trial between Heard and Depp reached a verdict in Virginia on Thursday.

At the beginning of the trial I was under the impression it was just celebrity tittle-tattle. Depp was suing his ex-wife for the reputational damage she caused him. He claims to have lost a Pirates of the Caribbean movie and much else as a result of her intervention. Heard, meanwhile, claims she has lost earnings for movie franchises such as Aquaman.

He sued for $50m in lost earnings. She countersued for $100m.

Nothing that has come out at trial edifies either party.

The pair in 2015.

Depp appears to be an angry, jealous addict, whose career was already spiralling thanks to his own behaviour.

Heard appears to be a deeply unstable person who routinely secretly recorded her husband and was prone to violence of her own.

Each now stands accused of assaulting the other. Certain of the details that came out at trial make it hard to see how either party will be getting a fragrance-promoting deal in the coming years.

But what has emerged turns out to expose more than just the messiness of the Depp-Heard marriage. It is also a reminder that while some cases of domestic violence are clear-cut, others most certainly are not. And blurring the line between the two is a serious societal mistake.

The MeToo movement had some cases that were very clear-cut. Others were not. And the insistence that a historic reckoning was occurring made the line between the two uncomfortably easy to breach. Cases of actual rape became caught up with cases of mere flirtation and, as in the case of Depp-Heard, seriously messy marital disharmony.

In the courtroom, Depp was shown to be deeply troubled. But Heard had repeatedly been shown to have lied. For instance, she had in the past promised to donate her $7m divorce settlement to charity. But the charities never got the money.

On the stand Heard was asked about this. Did she ever donate the money, Depp’s lawyer asked. “I pledged the entirety,” Heard responded. Depp’s lawyer pointed out that this is not the same thing. “I use pledge and donation synonymous with one another. They mean the same thing,” claimed Heard, directing herself as always at the jury.

Depp’s lawyer pushed: “As of today you have not donated – paid – $7m of your divorce settlement to charity, right?”

“I have not been able to fulfil those obligations yet,” Heard finally conceded.

It was one of a number of times on the stand that Heard showed herself to be capable of serious latitude with the truth. Heard claims Depp assaulted her, but it is now clear from the tapes that she assaulted him.

Depp in court.

You must pity the jury in a case like this. The days of testimony about lost earnings alone would have baffled anyone outside the entertainment industry.

How does any non-pro work out how much money Heard may or may not have lost from not being contracted for Aquaman 3? Or whether the figure of $50m in lost earnings for several years’ work is accurate or, as a number of witnesses proved, a fantasy movie in itself.

The court did its best, with the jury finding both liable for defamation, awarding Depp $15m and Heard $2m in damages. But beyond the court, the public mind already appears to be made up.

Going by online engagement and support outside the courthouse, it seems Depp’s supporters wildly outnumber Heard’s. There are those who will claim this is simply a product of the meat market of fame. But it may be a reflection of something else too. An overdue realisation that life, and relationships, are more complex than the hashtags of five years ago. And that moving past them would be no bad thing.

Douglas Murray is the author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason.