Over the last several days, a number of threads have popped up on Twitter providing evidence of Johnny Depp’s long history of (alleged) violence and abuse, aimed at intimate partners and random strangers alike. I found these very useful; maybe you will as well. Just be warned that there’s a lot of explicit discussion of abuse that could be triggering.
Meanwhile, Depp’s longtime friend Marilyn Manson seems to be preparing to do what Depp and his fans did to Amber Heard to his accuser, Evan Rachel Wood. Here’s some things to keep in mind as Manson plots what many are calling an “Amber Heard 2.0” plan against Wood.
If you’ve run across any useful threads I’ve missed, please post links in the comments below.
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I’m sorry David; but that thread had been thoroughly debunked.
I won’t go through every item; this rather lengthy article does that:
https://medium.com/@megcelu/the-tides-are-shifting-just-not-towards-amber-heard-the-truth-about-those-unsealed-documents-4f6a093b96cf
If people don’t fancy trawling through all that, I’d just make this point. When the trial judge said she would unseal the material it was Amber Heard who brought the motion to suppress that. Depp was happy for it to be released. So maybe an inference can be drawn from that.
This whole thing does bother me a bit; for a few reasons.
There’s my general bugbear of legal proceedings not being accurately reported; and there’s been so much of that in this trial.
There’s the thing of people not just disagreeing with the verdict, anyone is entitled to do that, but it’s misrepresenting what actually happened in the trial. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion; they are not entitled to their own facts.
I also find the attacks on the judge and jury completely unwarranted and distasteful. The worst vitriol though is that that has been hurled at Camille Vasquez. For supposed progressives, some of Heard’s supporters have no problem with racist, classist, and misogynistic abuse.
But the biggest thing is the alternative facts aspect.
Heard’s team have put out a totally, and provably, false narrative about what happened in the trial. And some people are buying into it.
And that concerns me.
It’s not so much this trial particularly; it’s how prevalent this is generally. Progressives supposedly pride themselves on their critical thinking skills; and their willingness to consider evidence and facts. But it seems that even in those circles people are so keen to apply confirmation bias; or just plain denial, when the facts and evidence suggest a version of reality they find unpalatable.
So if progressives can fall for it; can we be surprised that so many people honestly and genuinely believe the election was stolen?
I’m really curious, so I’d like to do an experiment if I may. To save a huge block of text I’ll do a separate post.
I’m just curious as to what people believe about the trial; and their sources of information.
This isn’t to get into a dispute about the underlying truth of the matter; it’s about the trial itself; and people’s understanding of that. So I’ll just throw out a few issues, and I’m really interested in people’s perception of them.
I’m just really curious on this. I do the videos and lectures and stuff because I think it’s really important to demystify the law. So feedback like this will be really helpful for how we can go about and, if necessary, improve that.
Any other comments of the topic gratefully received.
Are you going to keep doing this every time David decides to write a blog post about Amber Heard? I think you’re making a mistake and just feeding into the same arguments that everybody seems to be tired of, that seemingly have nothing to do with what you’re talking about.
In an earlier iteration, I said the following:
You were then claimed to be an example of someone with this belief.
You evidently do not wish to discuss whether Depp actually deserved to win his suit, a discussion that would involve deciding whether or not Heard had actually made defamatory statements in that op-ed. It doesn’t matter, though; people will put you on “their side” for you. Presumably you, as a law person, know that trials don’t necessarily get things right with regard to the truth of a claim or what each of two sides in dispute deserves. You can only really talk about the conduct of the legal teams, the judge, etc. Other people, however, do not make that distinction. They’re invested in defending the court system, particularly if it renders a verdict that they agree with.
The other thing is, it massively benefits Depp and his fans to frame this as a two-sided issue. I was very specific in that quote about the type of person I was talking about, and there are all sorts of beliefs about this case. Here’s an example of someone I found a while ago, saying she ultimately doesn’t know what the truth is, but that doesn’t change the issue that she’s talking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NJK3Re4lto
What the two sides framing does is pit that specific group I identified against everybody else. The same thing happens with just about every high-profile harassment campaign. Amber Heard could very well be a horrible person who abused other people. The allegations against Asia Argento aren’t arguments against the allegations by her. Some of the targets of Gamergate turned out to be shitheads. J.K. Rowling being a transphobic shithead doesn’t absolve Vaush making misogynistic comments toward her. And so on.
When David writes about this, when abuse experts talk about this, they’re seeing a pattern. That doesn’t mean that they’re infallible, and it’s worth correcting falsehoods. What you’re doing here, though, I believe is overemphasizing that quest for correction, effectively distracting from the actual main point motivating them to talk about this stuff, and shutting down a conversation that clearly still needs to be had. I really cannot give less of a shit that Amber Heard’s legal team is lying about aspects of the trial for attention. What matters to me is when I encounter Depp supporters, over and over again, make comments that are flagrantly misogynistic, ableist, or biphobic, or conspiratorial-sounding accusations against “the MSM”. Limp dick jokes are absolutely awful, but they pale in comparison to the consistent vileness I’ve encountered from people who were never going to be convinced of Depp’s guilt even if he had lost.
I’m a neurodivergent POC. People misread my body language all the time, to my detriment. I’m certain it would be even worse if I were dark-skinned. So it doesn’t matter in the slightest to me whether a juror lied about his eligibility, or whatever the hell trial junkies are quibbling about. It matters to me what the jurors actually based their decision on. They explicitly mentioned judging Heard’s body language. They explicitly mentioned judging the rationality of her actions. This is from an article a self-proclaimed member of the above-mentioned group posted here. It enrages and terrifies me that this passes as decisive reasoning in a colonial court. It saddens me that it still needs to be said that judging people based on racist stereotypes ingrained through the media might be a problem.
The biggest problem here doesn’t actually have anything to do with this trial. It has to do with the horrid justifications that people are willing to make in order to conclude that Johnny Depp must be the one sole victim, even though he’s a multimillionaire and, by that fact alone, can’t ever map properly to the experiences of the vast majority of abuse victims. And those justifications speak volumes about the state of Western society.
@An Impish Pepper: Well said, all of it.
She might be a terrible person, but he did things which are illegal to her and is a more-terrible person.
He and Marilyn Manson are despicable people, and need to go away — at least out of the public eye.
JK Rowling thinks he’s great, but we all know what a crappy person she is too. Which has nothing to do with her gender, she’s just a dumpster fire in several ways.
I’m not invested in this, so, off topic:
I did yet another dive into the webcomic Sinfest (I do this randomly maybe twice a year, even though I probably shouldn’t) and this time, it appears that Tatsuya has been coming down with a severe case of enbyphobia. For all of his transphobia, at least he never portrayed trans people as villains (or at least not as far as I can remember), just weak-willed and manipulated by drug corporations. He was way harsher with antifa and BLM.
However, lately he’s been portraying non-binary people as snakes in human suits, supervillains, and nazis, and “wannabe” non-binaries as clowns. Among other things, they’re infiltrating elementary schools in order to teach that “men” and “women” aren’t valid concepts. Because… uh… ???????
Their allies are adult babies, who are apparently pedophiles, and furries, who… throw dildos everywhere? I’m not sure where he’s going with that either.
Also his occasional attempts to redeem MAGAs (he didn’t think much of them during the Trump years, or Trump himself for that matter) have continued.
Hallo everyone! How’s it going eh? I just wanted to ignore all the heated discussion to ask a simple question: how is it legal to pay to have court records unsealed? In my understanding, sealed records are sealed forever (in absentia another crime or something) and that’s how people with a really bad juvenile record can have any kind of a job or life sometimes, by getting it sealed and not having to report it to employers and so forth.
Full disclosure, the law is not one of my studied areas of expertise, as you may clearly guess.
@Big Titty Demon: I was wondering the exact same thing.
@Big Titty Demon, The documents were already unsealed by the court and the public technically had had legal access to them but had to pay 50c per page. What Andrea Burkhart did was to crowdsource the money to buy the documents and then made them available for download on her webpage.
@ big titty demon & battering lamb
It isn’t. That’s just another piece of misinformation.
The judge unsealed the records.
Once they are unsealed you can then attend in person at the courthouse to view them; or you can obtain copies at 50c per page.
There were 6,641 pages. Andrea Burkhart raised the money for the copies through people chipping in. She then uploaded them so people can have access to them.
I think that was a useful journalistic exercise when there was a lot of, incorrect, commentary about what was in them.
@ impish pepper
You raise some really important points; both about the trial in particular, but also issues in general. To avoid too huge a wall of text I’ll just address them briefly.
David did invite references to further material. I think that article is a useufl one.
But the main point was, that thread is misinformation. And I think that needed to be addressed. Calling out misinformation is something that this site expressly does. We can’t just reserve fact checking for people we don’t approve of.
There’s also the issue of credibility. If we get caught out pushing a dubious narrative on one topic, that gives people ammunition to attack our veracity when we challenge other issues.
The problem though is when people start to believe the lies.
Like I say, it’s my despair of the new post truth world. Everyone can have opinions based on facts; but they have to base that opinion on actual facts; not ones they’ve made up; or chosen to accept without verifying the actual truth.
The online lawyers are particularly aggrieved by this conduct, as it reflects badly on the profession; but also they have a general duty to the truth.
The same lawyers are addressing the false claims by Alex Jones and fans. Despite his in court apology, he is now saying the trial was a sham and he is misrepresenting what happened. But should we just let that go then?
And I guarantee that the same issue will come up when the Jan 6 Committee reports.
I’m not sure we know anything about what the jurors thought. The initial juror revelations turned out to be a hoax. GMA then ran a story about a supposedly different juror. However the language used was identical to that of the hoaxer. I have tried to ascertain whether there has been any follow up to establish the truth. But the only source for the rumour is that initial GMA story. And that’s all gone quiet. So there’s nothing to suggest the jury didn’t just consider the actual evidence.
But your underlying point is a very good one; and one we have discussed a lot. How do juries and judges assess witness credibility?
Fact finders are allowed to take into account demeanour. But the dangers you identify are well understood. And there are efforts to mitigate that.
Judges and juries get guidance/directions on the dangers of reading too much into how someone gives evidence, as opposed to what they actually say.
To give one example, judges are reminded that, whilst in some cultures looking someone in the eye is seen as a sign of trustworthiness, in other cultures averting your gaze is a sign of respect to authority.
There’s also a general warning that even the most compelling and confident witness could be lying or mistaken, and the most dishevelled hesitant and nervous witness might well be telling the truth.
The courts also recognise that memory is not recall, it is reconstruction. So they get warnings that the mere fact testimony may change over time; does not mean a witness is untruthful. This is especially the case after traumatic events. They are told that.
The general guidance is that, whilst witness testimony is not irrelevant, it should be tested against the other evidence in the case, especially the stuff that is more reliable, like contemporaneous documents or physical evidence.
Over here we call that guidance the Gestmin Principles. They are an attempt to address some of the concerns you raise. Other jurisdictions have similar guidance.
But to get back to the fundamental point, this is why we try to demystify the law, but also explain issues like this. And part of that is pointing out misinformation and directing people to where they can check things out for themselves, like the actual unsealed material, rather than other people’s reporting on what it supposedly shows.
If there’s one thing lawyers are very used to it’s “citation needed’.
There are, as you rightly point out, a lot of issues in the legal system that need addressing. That’s something lawtubers bring up all the time. Using cases like this as illustrations.
But when there are so many real problems that need urgently addressing, it doesn’t help when the public get diverted from those by people making up false issues.
I watched part of the trial. I’m not on Twitter or YouTube for info. I hadn’t even heard about unsealed records!
I know from the trial that her counter claim against Depp’s lawyer won. He won more though. I haven’t followed any of it since maybe a week after the trial.
@Alan Robertshaw:
And then there are the neurodivergent. All bets are off as to the significance of their looking (or not looking) someone in the eye.
@Snowberry:
However, lately he’s been portraying non-binary people as snakes in human suits, supervillains, and nazis...
Meaning that you can toss at least one anti-Semitic dogwhistle into the mix, too; the Snake People From Outer Space trope (which originated in early 20th-century pulp fiction) is one of the fundamental building blocks of David Ickes’ cosmogony.
@Battering Lamb
Right? There are some poor kids that could cause a lot of trouble for if it had turned out to be a real headline as stated. I was freaking out for a bit, because if it could happen to a famous person, it could definitely happen to a nobody from some grungy vengeful relative.
@Jono and Alan
Thanks for the clearing that up for me! Much obliged: I didn’t want to wade into articles on that whole mess, I tend to find them very triggering due to some personal circumstances.
@ big titty demon
Yeah. But people can hopefully be reassured that, even if court documents are unsealed generally, some classes of documents can still remain confidential. That can include sensitive personal information; including juvenile or spent convictions. They can generally only be unsealed in very special circumstances. Also a court has the discretion to expunge a record. So there there’s nothing to actually unseal; as it’s treated as if the record never even existed.
There is another related issue. It relates to a sensitive and potentially triggering subject though, so I’ll put it behind a spoiler tab.
The confidential judgement is though contained in the unsealed material. It was submitted by AH’s team when they tried to get the US trial knocked out.
So that previously confidential material is now publicly available.
But the issue is, can people in England and Wales refer to it?
When the court issues a confidential judgment, there’s like an implicit injunction that no one will publish it or refer to its contents. To do so would arguably be a contempt of court.
So arguably, despite it now being public domain information, it may still be that that’s not the case over here.
We did another video exploring this issue.
For both legal reasons, and just generally that it’s not something we wish to delve into, we didn’t talk about what was actually in the confidential annex. So the vid hopefully isn’t too directly triggering; but obviously people will know what we’re referencing.
@Full Metal Ox
In fairness to David Icke, he has repeatedly stressed that he is not anti-semitic, because the shapeshifting alien lizard-people that secretly rule the world are only disguised as Jews, and are not actually Jewish.
Totally different.
@Snowberry
Part of me frankly shudders to think how Tatsuya thinks of and portrays Intersex people going off of this bigoted and reactionary rubric they are running off of if they are now vilifying trans folks.
It also bears asking if people like Tatsuya think being anything but Cis is somehow a new, novel thing that is somehow “weak-willed and manipulated by drug corporations” or are part of the machinations of some kind of Jewish/Furry/Child Preaditors: than how do they explain Native American Two-Spirits or literally any non-binry gender that has existing far long before any contemporary LGBT advocacy movements of the past 80 years??!
Even as a straight/cis man: hetronormative transphobic notions make zero sense to me
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-binary_gender
@ surplus
Indeed. The ‘bench book’ (as the guidance is called) does go into quite some detail about neurodivergent people.
This is an extract from one of the chapters. This is the guidance for judges trying cases; but juries can be instructed accordingly.
There’s also special training for barristers.
https://www.icca.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/20-Principles-of-Questioning-2022.pdf
@Tactical Progressive:
I can’t say about Tatsuya specifically because I don’t think he’s ever mentioned intersex people in-comic, but he’s very strongly aligned with GC (Gender-Critical) philosophies, and I can tell you what such people generally think about intersex folk:
If you ask them, most will say that they’re a miniscule minority, who basically don’t matter in regards to gender-related issues. If you press them, they’ll probably say that maybe they do need some sort of protection from being preyed upon by men, particularly if they’re more on the femme side in terms of personality and appearance and especially if they have functioning uteri, but that’s not really a significant concern. The ones with a genuine feminist bent might consider some of them to be “honorary women”, but deny that they should have any say in women’s issues.
Basically, intersex people have no place in ideologies which embrace gender essentialism, but unlike trans or non-binary people they’re rarely seen as threats, just irrelevant nobodies. After all, they were born physically different, so they’re not purposefully trying to “cross gender lines”, and life is so cruel to them for forcing them exist outside the fundamental sex binary, poor dears. [Desperately tries to change subject]
…At least in theoretical conversations. In practice I’ve seen them sort intersex people to one side of the sex/gender binary or the other, based on physical/facial appearance when possible, and then treating them accordingly, thereby erasing them. Because intersex people really, really don’t have a place in the GC worldview, to the point where they’re not just irrelevant nobodies, they’re purely abstract irrelevant nobodies.
TL;DR – Gendercrits’ usual response is to acknowledge intersex people exist while simultaneously engaging in intersex erasure.
Yeah I gotta agree on this one. We can’t denigrate your average right-winger for believing whatever nonsense pops up on Fox News and their social media feeds if our own internal arbiter for truth is just Vibes or “they are a bad person anyway so it doesn’t matter”.
I see it all the time with fake tweets. I saw one made for J K Rowling and when it was pointed out it wasn’t real, the general consensus was that it was fine *because it seemed like something she would say* and is therefore legit. There is more than enough REAL stuff she spews out every day for there to be no need to make shit up.
I can’t stress enough how much I don’t care about Jonny Depp or JK because they are multimillionaires willingly engaging with the public for their own highly unpleasant aims, but this vortex of mistruth and bad faith and lack of nuance sucks up decent people on the left all the time. We may never get another Lindsey Ellis youtube video for example, and for what? So some people could pat themselves on the back for burning the witch, payback for her terrible crime of a poorly phrased tweet?
Our desire for a villain of the day and to expunge those without 100% perfect behaviour or views is not necessarily a fight for justice, and most especially if we engage with made-up crap because it feels good. We have to uphold some standards, even for the Objectively Bad People, or it all falls apart.
Alan Robertshaw is full of bullshit and so is the “evidence” and links he provides. He is a Johnny Depp stan taking cues from other stans, just another run-of-the-mill domestic violence apologist hiding behind his professional background and doing lots of projection. Come on, remember other supposedly “feminist” men like Joss Whedon. These kind of people infest our movements and often get away with it too easily for too long.
@LollyPop:
No more Lindsey Ellis videos? So what? There are lots of talented woman out there who could do a similar job. Besides, she’s one of the people who whines about “cancel culture”, which is also a big, flaming red flag.
Reactionary hyperbole.
Paradox of tolerance. Better be safe than sorry.
Reaktor, most of us have read what Alan actually wrote – and what he and others have been writing over a considerable period of time. You are, to put it charitably, mistaken in your assumptions.
… which reminds me, I’ve been wondering – does anybody happen to have any news of Scildfreja? I hope she’s well, wherever she may be. (I bet there’s a lot of us who miss her!)
Sorry, Alan Robertshaw, but I do not see the debunking of the tweet presented by David (especialy the one from @liliandaisies) in your article. Can you please elaborate ? What make you think that those allegation are false ? They does not seam to be directly linked with the trial, but that does not make them false.
@Reaktor
Do you truly believe that Lindsey Ellis is a racist who deserved a coordinated and ongoing hate campaign? Or does it just feel great to see a woman who’s respected for her intellect and who expressed herself creatively torn down? In the end, it wasn’t the alt-right who forced her away but “progressives”, inflicting punishment entirely disproportionate to any harm she may have caused. Great job!
Best to use the term “reactionary” correctly, or you might start looking like a tankie.
Safe from what? The truth? Are you actually arguing that painting people as wholly and irredeemably bad through lies and distortion is necessary lest their secret badness leak out and infect us all? I’d rather let people’s actions speak for themselves, thanks.
@opposablethumbs:
Scildfreyja shows up for maybe a week at a time on rare occasions. AFAIK none of the current regulars knows when that will happen.