The Depp-Heard Trial and What it Means in the Long Run
Hint: Ultimately nothing to the rest of us.
I’m going to start this off with two caveats: One, I didn’t watch the entire Depp-Heard trial, only snippets. And two, I’ve never been the perpetrator or the victim of conjugal abuse.
I have no skin in this game, so anything I say here carries about as much weight as the next person who also doesn’t know either Johnny Depp or Amber Heard personally or has ever witnessed them in action together.
I’m not here to make judgement on either of them. The dynamics of any relationship are always complex and not easy to define. It’s clear they’ve done things to hurt each other. It’s clear they’re still wanting to hurt each other. But where do we, the observers, fit it?
We don’t.
“Abuse” is a loaded word. It can mean anything from hurling ugly, hurtful words, from making impossible demands, from isolating the victim from friends and family, to causing physical pain and injury. Some of it is obvious because the abuser doesn’t care who sees it, but most often it isn’t. The bruises don’t always show. There isn’t always a split lip or a black eye. Sometimes the abuse is to the spirit.
I followed an interesting thread on Twitter yesterday, started by someone who had been in a long-term abusive…
