- Every single day, I have to relive the trauma.
My hands shake.
I wake up screaming.
I have to live with the trauma and the damage done to me.
- The trial between Amber Heard
and ex-husband Johnny Depp lasted six weeks.
Prompted largely by an opinion piece that Heard wrote
in "The Washington Post" in 2018,
Depp sued Heard for defamation for her claims of abuse.
Heard responded with a counter lawsuit, which was dismissed.
The trail included in-depth testimony
from both Heard and Depp
detailing the deeply personal inner workings
of their relationship and marriage.
This included accusations
of physical violence and verbal abuse.
- Slapped me across the face.
Said, "You think it's so funny?
You think it's funny [bleep]
You think you're a funny [bleep]"
And he slapped me again.
I just stared at him 'cause I didn't know what else to do.
- I'm sure that if this was two people unknown to the public,
it would receive way less attention.
There are court cases all the time like this
without the fame, and it's not in the news.
There are many times we, as outside observers,
cannot know what happened in the past.
We just don't have enough information to know.
But we can see what's happening right in front of us.
- Jennifer Freyd is an expert
in the psychology of sexual violence.
In the '90s, she coined the term DARVO,
an acronym that describes a typical response
from people accused of abuse.
It stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
- Someone got some supposed evidence on me
doing something illegal. Um, uh...
- Well, did you tell everyone you didn't do anything wrong?
- Y-Yeah, of course.
- Well, did you then go on the attack
and swap the accusations to make yourself a victim?
- D-Did I what? - Oh, geez.
DARVO, Randy.
- The most insidious part is this role reversal,
where the person being held accountable or accused
takes the victim's stance,
and accuses the person who has raised the allegations.
- In her frustration and in her rage and her anger,
she would strike out.
She would -- it could begin with a slap.
- A trial with domestic violence at its center
has caused Heard to relive dark moments on a public stage.
For some assault victims,
coming forward can provide closure and healing,
but it can also be re-traumatizing.
- This is the most painful and difficult thing
I've ever gone through, for sure.
- Often, people say, "Why don't you tell somebody?"
Or, "Why didn't she tell somebody?"
The truth is that telling can lead to terrible things.
The only time in which telling is valuable
is when there is a good response to that telling,
and we live in a society where good responses
are less likely than bad responses.
- The social response for the trial
has been especially jarring for Heard,
who has been attacked and mocked on social-media platforms,
becoming a target for Internet trolls.
- People want to kill me, and they tell me so every day.
People want to put my baby in the microwave,
and they tell me that.
- That vilification is almost certainly really harmful
to people's immediate feelings but also to their willingness
to talk about their own experiences.
Why would somebody, when they watch what happens to someone
who brings this sort of difficult material up,
and they see that person get treated so terribly,
why would they put themselves in that position?
A negative social response can be deeply damaging.
It can be more predictive of the long-term well-being of,
say, a rape survivor than details of the rape itself.
It's how people respond.
- This is painful, and this is humiliating
for any human being to go through.
And perhaps it's easy to forget that I'm a human being.
- It may be easier to identify with one or the other
based on what you've experienced in the world,
and the danger there is
that you might miss the truth of the other person
because it's not as easy to identify with them.
For instance, it's easier to imagine being falsely accused
of something than to imagine
actually being the perpetrator of the allegations.
- Though the Depp/Heard trial has been divisive for fans,
fellow entertainers, commentators, the media,
victims, and survivors, Freyd says
it has created an opportunity for society to reflect.
- There are going to be some people
who will celebrate it and others who will feel
it was a miscarriage of justice.
If we get beyond that and get to deeper,
more nuanced questions about,
how do we create a world in which relationships are healthy,
where violence doesn't happen,
where, if there is violence, people can get protected?
If we focus on those things, it could result in, ultimately,
good things happening.