WASHINGTON: The acrid US defamation trial between actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard — and the decision to televise it — will have a “potentially catastrophic” impact on abuse survivors, advocates say.
Jurors in the six-week trial, in which the former husband and wife traded claims and counterclaims of violent domestic abuse, sided largely with Depp this week, ordering Heard to pay him $10.35 million for defaming him in a 2018 Washington Post editorial in which she never mentioned his name.
Judge Penney Azcarate decided weeks before the trial began to allow cameras in the state court, fearing that if she did not, too many reporters…
