WARNING: This article contains allegations of physical and sexual violence that some readers may find distressing.
A Virginia court has been shown photos of Amber Heard’s scarred arm at a 2015 red carpet event which she said was caused by a violent incident involving Johnny Depp and a vodka bottle.
“Those are scars that I obtained as Johnny was strangling and assaulting me on a countertop in Australia,” Ms Heard told the court on Monday as she took the stand during the former spouses’ multi-million-dollar defamation trial.
Jurors were shown a photo taken at a New York City premiere for the independent movie When I live my life over again on 15 April 2015.
Ms Heard said the event took place soon after an incident in early March in Australia where she said “Johnny held me down on the counter tops and my arms were cut on the glass in that attack”.
Other photos from a second red carpet event – for the Magic Mike press tour – were shown to the court, revealing several scars on Ms Heard’s left arm as she brushes her hair from her face.
Ms Heard said that she had tried to cover the scars with makeup but they were “a bit harder to cover as they’re rather fresh”.
She said that Mr Depp had not wanted her to go on the press tour.
The former spouses have given drastically different accounts of the incident in Australia in March 2015.
Ms Heard testified that Mr Depp sexually assualted her with a liquor bottle. Mr Depp testified that Ms Heard threw a vodka bottle at him, which cut off the top of his middle finger.
During Ms Heard’s testimony, she said Mr Depp “slams me against the wall hard” and called her names.
She said he threw her into a ping-pong table, threw a bottle in her direction and held a broken bottle up next to her face and neck, saying he would “carve up [her] face”.
Ms Heard said she was “terrified” as she could “feel glass breaking behind [her]”.
At one point, she said Mr Depp ripped her nightgown off her, leaving her naked.
She said Mr Depp ended up “on top of [her]”, telling her she’d “ruined [his] f****** life”.
“The next thing I remember, I was bent over backwards on the bar, meaning my chest was up. I was staring at the blue light. My back is on the countertop and I thought he was punching me. I felt this pressure on my pubic bone. I thought he was punching me. I could feel his arm moving and it looked like he was punching me. But I could just feel this pressure,” she said.
“I remember not wanting to move because I didn’t know of it was broken – I didn’t know if the bottle that he had inside me was broken.
“I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t feel pain. I didn’t feel pain. I didn’t feel anything. ... I looked around and I saw so much broken glass. ... I just remember thinking ‘Please God, please. I hope it’s not broken.’”
Ms Heard said she took sleeping pills after the incident and woke up to find Mr Depp “missing a finger”, which she said might have occurred when Mr Depp smashed up a phone earlier.
Meanwhile, Mr Depp testified that Ms Heard was hurling glass bottles in his direction.
The first went “right past my head and smashed behind me”, he said.
When he said he grabbed another bottle and poured himself a shot and drank it, he said Ms Heard grabbed the bottle and threw it at him.
He alleged that the bottle “made contact” with him and “shattered everywhere”.
“I didn’t feel the pain at first at all,” he said. “I felt no pain whatsoever. I felt heat and I felt as if something were dripping down my hand. And then I looked down and realized that the tip of my finger had been severed, and I was looking directly at my bones sticking out.”
Mr Depp said “blood was just pouring out” and that the incident was “probably the closest that I’ve ever been” to having a nervous breakdown.
“Nothing made sense. I knew in my mind and in my heart, this is not life, this is not life. No one should have to go through this,” he said.
“And as I said, this feeling of being in the middle of some sort of nervous breakdown, I started to write in my own blood on the walls little reminders from our past that essentially represented lies that she had told me, and lies that I had caught her in.”
Ms Heard returned to the stand for a third day of testimony as the trial resumed after a one-week break on Monday.
Mr Depp is suing his ex-wife for defamation over a 2018 op-ed she penned for The Washington Post where she described herself as a “a public figure representing domestic abuse”.
The Pirates of the Caribbean actor is not named in the article, which is titled “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”.
However Mr Depp claims that it falsely implies that he is a domestic abuser – something that he strongly denies – and that it has left him struggling to land roles in Hollywood. He is suing for $50m.
Ms Heard is countersuing for $100m, accusing Mr Depp of orchestrating a “smear campaign” against her and describing his lawsuit as a continuation of “abuse and harassment”.
The trial began on 11 April in Fairfax, Virginia, with explosive testimony playing out inside the courtroom.
