Johnny Depp has pledged to donate $1 million from his Amber Heard settlement to charity.
Earlier this week, the Aquaman actress settled her multi-million dollar US defamation case with her ex-husband.
In response to the verdict, the Pirates of the Caribbean star’s lawyers Benjamin Chew and Camille Vasquez told E! News: “We are pleased to formally close the door on this painful chapter for Mr. Depp, who made clear throughout this process that his priority was about bringing the truth to light.”
“The jury’s unanimous decision and the resulting judgement in Mr. Depp’s favour against Ms. Heard remain fully in place,” the lawyers continued.
They added: “The payment of $1M — which Mr. Depp is pledging and will actually donate to charities — reinforces Ms. Heard’s acknowledgement of the conclusion of the legal system’s rigorous pursuit for justice.”
In June, a jury of five men and two women found Amber guilty of defaming Johnny in an op-ed for the Washington Post, which was published in December 2018.
Johnny, 59, launched a $50 million defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife in 2019, after she wrote about being an alleged victim of domestic violence in the op-ed.
Following a six-week trial and 13 hours of deliberations, the jury sided with Depp and awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages, and a further $5 million in punitive damages.
However, Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Penney Azcarate reduced the punitive damages to $350,000, which is the State of Virginia’s legal limit, resulting in total damages of $10.4 million awarded to Johnny.
Earlier this month, Amber appealed for a new defamation trial, but she has since decided to settle the case.
She wrote on Instagram on Monday: “After a great deal of deliberation I have made a very difficult decision to settle the defamation case brought against me by my ex-husband in Virginia.”
“It’s important for me to say that I never chose this. I defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed. The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimised when they come forward.
“Now I finally have an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago and on terms I can agree to. I have made no admission. This is not an act of concession. There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward.”
The actress continued: “Even if my US appeal is successful, the best outcome would be a re-trial where a new jury would have to consider the evidence again. I simply cannot go through that for a third time.”
“For too many years I have been caged in an arduous and expensive legal process, which has shown itself unable to protect me and my right to free speech.”
“I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system, where my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder.”
“When I stood before a judge in the UK, I was vindicated by a robust, impartial and fair system, where I was protected from having to give the worst moments of my testimony in front of the world’s media, and where the court found that I was subjected to domestic and sexual violence.”
“In the US, however, I exhausted almost all my resources in advance of and during a trial in which I was subjected to a courtroom in which abundant, direct evidence that corroborated my testimony was excluded and in which popularity and power mattered more than reason and due process,” she continued.
“In the interim I was exposed to a type of humiliation that I simply cannot re-live. I simply cannot go through that for a third time.”
Amber went on to say that the US legal process “has shown itself unable to protect me and my right to free speech.”
“I cannot afford to risk an impossible bill – one that is not just financial, but also psychological, physical and emotional. Women shouldn’t have to face abuse or bankruptcy for speaking her truth, but unfortunately it is not uncommon.”
The actress also said that she is “choosing the freedom to dedicate my time to the work that helped me heal after my divorce.”
“I will not be threatened, disheartened or dissuaded by what happened from speaking the truth. No one can and no one will take that from me. My voice forever remains the most valuable asset I have,” Amber concluded her statement.
During the six-week long defamation trial earlier this year, Amber detailed multiple incidents of alleged abuse, and told the court that “violence became normal” towards the end of their relationship.
However, Johnny testified that he never hit his ex-wife, and claimed that she was the abuser in their relationship.
In court, the 58-year-old said the allegations that he was a “drunken, cocaine-fueled menace who beat women” have cost him “everything”.
Johnny and Amber first met in 2009 on the set of the film The Rum Diary, and were married in February 2015.
Their divorce was finalised two years later.
