Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s former counsellor claimed the dysfunctional couple ‘engaged in mutual abuse’ over the course of their marriage, in a deposition that was played in court on Thursday.
According to Variety, Dr. Laurel Anderson weighed in on the couple’s abusive relationship history in her testimony that was recorded earlier on February 21 for the defamation case filed by Depp against Heard over a 2018 op-ed about ‘surviving domestic abuse’.
In her deposition, Dr. Anderson detailed the marriage counselling she provided the couple with back in 2015.
When asked if Depp abused Heard, Anderson replied: “Yes, you're right. He had been well controlled, I think, for almost, I don't know, 20, 30 years.”
She continued: “Both were victims of abuse in their homes, but I thought he had been well controlled for decades. And then with Ms. Heard he was triggered, and they engaged in what I saw as mutual abuse.”
Anderson also claimed that Heard “sometimes initiated the fights in order to keep him with her because abandonment was her worst nightmare.”
The counsellor also recalled Heard telling her, “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.”
Depp and Heard have been embroiled in bitter legal cases ever since they split up in 2016. The pair first met on the sets of 2011 movie The Rum Diary and were divorced by 2016.