Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past few weeks, you will have heard about the allegations against Johnny Depp from his soon to be ex-wife Amber Heard. While they are complete strangers to us ordinary guys, sadly the situation isn't new, and sadly neither is the public's reaction.
The public have spoken, and the majority rules: we have seen people take the side of the abuser over the victim. Twitter has seen a rush of people jump to defend the 'honour' of Depp with the hashtag #imwithjohnny and equally belittle and blame Heard for being a "gold-digger", "liar" and "slut who had it coming". It doesn't matter that she has an eye witness and photographic evidence. Apparently Depp's lawyers have stated that one of the bruises was because Depp threw his phone at Heard in an "isolated" incident. I'm sorry. but it whether it was isolated or not shouldn't matter, that admittance should be enough - but sadly it isn't.
We saw a similar thing happen years ago between Rihanna and Chris Brown. The reaction, however, was different, of course there were those who defended Brown, but the majority of his supporters turned against him. This may be due to racial stigmas and stereotypes, I don't know, but more people were on Rihanna's side than they are on Heard's. Of course we don't want to believe it - this is Captain Jack Sparrow we are talking about, the man we looked up too who was always a bit weird but brought us The Mad Hatter and Edward Scissorhands. We think we know him, but the reality is that we don't - all all.
In this case it really doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong, that is for the courts to decide, it's the public's reaction to the allegations which is worrying. This isn't the first time victims have been portrayed as making up abuse claims for their own personal benefit, and sadly I don't think that it will be the last.
A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to organise and run one of the UK's National Domestic Abuse Conferences and it opened my eyes further to the problem. I remember talking to a police woman who was telling me that when she joined the force she got a distress call by a woman saying her husband was beating her. The police woman arrived at the scene to find the woman covered in blood but was unable to do anything other than call an ambulance and give the husband a caution because at the time there was no law to protect women. That was just 30 years ago.
We have progressed since then yes, but it was only last year that the government passed a law allowing sentencing for those who use the internet and control as a form of domestic abuse, and Clare's Law only came into effect in 2014, allowing the police to disclose someone's past criminal record to a partner if they believe they are in danger.
Rape in a marriage only became illegal in 1991 - that was the year I was born, meaning that it was still legal to rape your spouse in our parents generation. That, to me, is a scary thought.
Currently 2 women are killed every week in Great Britain by a current or former partner, and 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence during their lifetime. Remember though, it happens to men too, and due to the way society reacts, men are less likely to come forward for fear of being treated differently, being told to "man-up" and get over it. This isn't something that we should put to the sidelines, it's something which is a serious problem and needs to be tackled head on. There are countless charities such as Women's Aid and Refuge which offer support, and Paul Andrew Williams and Regina Moriaty's drama Murdered by My Boyfriend brought a lot of things into the light, but it's not enough. It still happens all the time, albeit behind closed doors.
Domestic violence isn't something that people tend to make up, regardless of their circumstances and going back to our famous strangers caught in the media, remember that Amber Heard would not have been granted a restraining order had there not been grounds for one. The scariest consequence of this though, isn't the media and the twitter trolls, it's the women who are currently being abused who will see how Heard is being treated and decide not to come forward.
Photo: Joe Seer/ shutterstock.co.uk
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