Depp dragged Amber into two trials. The first he filed on 1st June 2018 in the UK when he sued The Sun. Amber was called as a witness. The trial focussed on fourteen incidents of assault / rape. Judge Nicol found that Amber had been assaulted twelve times and raped once. Lord Justices Dingemans and Underhill upheld this decision on appeal.
Depp sued Amber directly in the U.S. in March 2019 for an Op-Ed she wrote for The Washington Post in December 2018. He sued her for the following lines. The first was not written by Amber but added to the Op-Ed without Amber's knowledge.
"I spoke up against sexual violence - and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change"
"Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out"
"I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse".
The rest of the Op-Ed is about strengthening laws to protect victims of violence, fighting discrimination, helping students on campus who have suffered sexual assault.
Depp chose to sue in Virginia although neither Depp nor Amber resided there. He used the excuse that the Washington Post servers were based there. This was a strategic move as Virginia had the most lax anti SLAPP laws. Virginia has since amended their laws to prevent 'frivolous law suits'.
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