The Hollywood Reporter has obtained previously unreleased documents and testimony taken during Amber Heard and Johnny Depp’s 2016 divorce—including a 471-page deposition transcript in which Heard refers to Depp’s alleged abuse as “the monster” and a detailed description of a domestic abuse incident on May 21, 2016 in Los Angeles when LAPD was called.
THR reports that on Aug. 13, 2016, Heard told Depp’s divorce attorney Blair Berk that “Johnny and I refer to his other personality, the part of him that is present when he beats me up—we call that the monster and have called [that] the monster for many years. I was petrified of the monster.”
In another section of the transcript, according to the Hollywood Reporter, Heard claimed that on May 21, 2016, while in their Los Angeles residence, Depp threw his phone at her face “as hard as he could” before grabbing her by the hair and breaking “a lot of glass things that left glass on the floor.” She recounted her friend Raquel Pennington coming over to check on her and LAPD responding to a 911 call made by another friend, iO Tillett Wright. According to THR, Pennington gave a statement, which claimed that Depp was “swinging around” a bottle of wine. Pennington said Depp had a security team with him outside the room, who entered when he started screaming and talked him into leaving.
Responding LAPD Officers Melissa Saenz and Tyler Hadden shared similar testimonies, both claiming to have not seen any broken glass or, as Ashley Cullins writes in the Hollywood Reporter, any “probable cause to believe a crime had been committed.” From in THR:
Depp recounted a different set of events leading up to that evening. The actor, in a July 2018 filing in The Sundefamation lawsuit, claimed Heard was “aggressive and violent” and punched him in the face twice the night of April 21, 2016 after he was late to her birthday dinner. The night of May 21, he said he went to the penthouse to retrieve some of his belongings and brought two of his security guards with him because he “was concerned about what Ms. Heard might do.”
According to THR, Depp denied in his deposition that he touched, hit, or threw a phone at Heard, and that Heard’s injuries seen in the photographs were not caused by him.
Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman told the Hollywood Reporter if Heard “would like to go to court… we will see her there.”
