Johnny Depp And Amber Heard's Former Marriage Counselor Shares Disturbing Account Of Their Marriage

The following article includes allegations of domestic abuse.

Shocking details are emerging only days into the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. On April 13, Depp's longtime friend, Isaac Baruch, was questioned in court by Heard's attorney over myriad jarring text exchanges between him and Depp, per the Independent. One such message, read out loud in court, stated Depp's desire to see Heard as "a rotting corpse ... decomposing in the f*****g trunk of a Honda Civic."

Dr. David Kipper, who began treating Depp for an opioid addiction in 2014, shared some revelatory texts of his own. In a video deposition played in court on April 13, Kipper confirmed Depp's nurse Debra Lloyd had texted him that the actor "punched a white board in the kitchen after a fight," per Deadline. However, Kipper testified to never personally witnessing any violence between Depp and Heard. Additionally, in a setback for Team Depp, Georgina Deuters, the wife of a longtime Depp employee, had her testimony stricken from record after admitting to watching trial footage beforehand, per Insider. Deuters had been recounting the story of Heard allegedly offering her MDMA at her 2015 wedding to Depp when her testimonial was interrupted.

Amongst the most harrowing testimonies, however, was Depp and Heard's former marriage counselor depicting their relationship in a most unsettling light. 

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's former marriage counselor dropped some major bombshells during Depp's defamation trial against his ex-wife. During Dr. Laurel Anderson's pre-recorded video deposition played in court on April 14, via People, she addressed the accusations of violence between the ex-couple. Acknowledging that although Depp never displayed violent behavior with previous significant others, Anderson stated that with Heard, "he was triggered, and they engaged in what I saw as mutual abuse." 

Testifying to witnessing "multiple" small bruises on Heard's face in one session, Anderson believed that Heard took "pride" in initiating fights. To the "Aquaman" star, Anderson said, "Abandonment was her worst nightmare." Heard's refusal to yield fights would negate her ex-husband's efforts to defuse the situation. "If [Depp] were going to leave her to deescalate the fight, she would strike him to keep him there because she would rather be in a fight than have him leave," Anderson noted. 

As for why Depp's behavior was so different with Heard than his exes, Anderson offered, "He had been well controlled, I think, for almost, I don't know, 20, 30 years. Both were victims of abuse in their homes." The latter statement directly correlates to Depp's sister, Christi Dembrowski, testifying on April 12 that their mother "screamed, yelled, hit [us], threw things, called us names" for all of their childhoods, per the Independent. 

The drama rages on as Johnny Depp sues Amber Heard over an op-ed she wrote in 2018 for The Washington Post. Although she never actually mentioned Depp by name, she called herself a victim of domestic abuse and, given the well-publicized accusations of violence by both sides, it was clear to whom she was referring.

Depp has already lost one defamation lawsuit, though. In November 2020, he lost a highly publicized case against The Sun, which called him "a wife-beater." The judge ruled the article was "substantially true" and said he believed that a dozen of the alleged domestic violence acts Depp was accused of were founded. A spokesperson for The Sun championed the paper for defending domestic violence victims for "decades" and thanked Heard for her strength and bravery in having gone public with her alleged ordeal.

Once again, the mud-slinging is well underway. Per People, in his opening statements, Heard's attorney claimed there was proof his client suffered "physical, emotional, verbal and psychological abuse, as well as sexual violence" at the hands of her ex. Depp branded the allegations "fictitious." He claimed they're "designed to "shock" and to fit with the #MeToo movement agenda. Meanwhile, during her pre-recorded testimony, the couple's former marriage counselor, Dr. Laurel Anderson, emphasized that her clients were "mutually abusive," as described above, because both actors had been subjected to abuse as children — abuse to which Depp's sister can attest.

One of Johnny Depp's sisters, Christi Dembrowski, took the stand to testify on his behalf. Dembrowski admitted their mother physically abused them when they were young. Dembrowski said Betty Sue Palmer regularly became "angry," resulting in violently lashing out at her husband and children. Dembrowski shared she also had cruel nicknames for her kids, calling Depp "one eye" because he had a lazy eye as a child. "As we were older, we decided that once we had our own home, that we were never going to repeat in our own home anything similar to our childhood," Dembrowski shared, according to Insider.

Per USA Today, Heard was raised in the country as a Catholic. However, at age 16, Heard became an atheist and "deeply disturbed" following the death of her best friend in a car crash. The traumatic incident inspired her move to New York to pursue a career in modeling.

During Depp's failed defamation trial against The Sun, an ex-assistant testified Heard "stole" her personal story of childhood sexual abuse and repurposed it as her own. "To my utter shock and dismay, I discovered that Ms. Heard had, in fact, stolen my sexual violence conversation with her and twisted it into her own story to benefit herself," Kate James testified, via The Guardian. "This, of course caused me extreme distress and outrage that she would dare to attempt to use the most harrowing experience of my life as her own narrative."

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233 or TTY 1−800−787−3224. You can also find more information, resources, and support at www.thehotline.org.