Amber Heard&Johnny Depp post verdict

[Miscfeminista]

Continuation of previous thread:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/feminism/4560089-amber-heardjohnny-depp-verdict?page=1

and the one before(during trial):

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4552076-amber-heardjohnny-depp-trial?page=36&reply=117586863

Also, refresher on DV:

www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/recognising-domestic-abuse/

You're explaining to me, a rape victim with diagnosed cPTSD - from the position of having never yourself had this less-than-enviable experience - what being a rape victim with PTSD feels like? This feels pretty near the definition of mansplaining to me. You have a weird sense of humour, I'll give you that.

I can assure you, being raped is no picnic. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But coming from your stated position your cuckoo view would be hilarious, were it not so tragic, to deduce that the aftermath of rape is just as bad for for the poor ole men. Let's moot a novel concept. How about men just, you know, stop raping us?

And this, fellow posters, is what women are up against. Attitudes like this are sadly by no means uncommon. The saddest thing is, they're likely serious.

"And overlooking what kind of person uses blood from a severed finger to write abuse to their partner- then dips it in paint to write more when the blood stops"

Oh well..just part of his multidimensional creative persona you know..

People believed Amber had donated the entirety of her divorce settlement. She at no point corrected them either in court or on the television.

Maybe because it's nobody else's business and sod all to do with whether she was a victim of domestic violence?

I know, I know - credibility...

But there's a difference between an out-and-out lie and this donate/pledge thing.

Has she donated money to those charities? Yes, a lot more than most people.
Communicated with those charities about the donation and how she would make it? Yes.
Taken a smaller divorce settlement than she could? Definitely.
Had to spend a LOT of money on legal fees (dating from the previous court case, she will have needed legal counsel then)? Again, obviously yes.

Btw JD could have donated it all directly. With a stipulation that it was adjusted so it didn't become purely a tax write-off for him. He chose not to.

And this, fellow posters, is what women are up against. Attitudes like this are sadly by no means uncommon. The saddest thing is, they're likely serious.

Serious enough to say other posters are extremists who shouldn't have sons.

I don't think the poster was being sympathetic about rapists, she was talking about men who were wrongly accused and maybe ending up in prison for years.

I don't think anyone on here is advocating for rapists just saying you can't just lock someone up without evidence.

Oh yes...we need to be careful and tip toe around men's wellbeing and feelings and we also need to take care of them in case they get"falsely accused"

We have to think of everyone's well being and that even includes the half the of world's population who have XY chromosomes, tiresome though that might be.

because there are men who get accused of something they actually haven't done but in a lot of other cases it seems they call themselves falsely accused simpy because they deny they done anything wrong or when their victim failed to prove it despite it being true, like in AH case

Lots of men and women accused of things deny having done them. In most cases they're probably lying, as Amber did. In other cases they will be telling the truth, as the jury believed Johnny was doing. We need to analyse each accusation on a case by case basis and not come to a conclusion based on the sex of the accuser and accused. That is blind justice.

Rates of false accusations for crimes are tiny

Are they? How would you know? How can we be sure of any conviction or accusation which doesn't present absolutely overwhelming physical evidence linking someone directly to the crime?

Conversely getting a conviction for rape is extremely hard

It is indeed. That's in the nature of the crime. In a crime where there is often little evidence that consent was absent and where innocence is presumed it is always going to be extremely hard to get convictions.

There are far more men walking around who are rapists and get away with it, than men who've been falsely accused

Highly probable

Statistically, a high proportion of those "not guilty" actually did rape someone, it just can't be proved

Also highly probable

The myth of the "false accusations ruin lives" is what upholds this state of affairs. It really should be unacceptable in a fair society for women to be unable to get justice for rape. However society prefers to protect men.

But it isn't a myth. False accusations really do ruin lives and it isn't that which makes conviction rates low. Society hasn't found a way to punish rapists with a degree of certainty. That may never happen unless you start from a presumption of guilt or some new technology could miraculously prove a lack of consent.

Being wrongly accused of rape and being raped are two completely separate experiences.

Both awful but the latter much much worse.

Being rightly accused, you deserve everything thing shit in life, nothing less.

I don't think anyone on here is advocating for rapists just saying you can't just lock someone up without evidence.

Nobody is suggesting that. It's whether a woman - or a man - has a right to discuss their own experiences of abuse.

It’s my position also that I want justice for women who are abused/raped and for women/men falsely accused of abuse (or rape in the case of men).

However I don’t think we know statistically for a fact which is far more common than the other. I’ve read the studies and the ones that say things like false accusations of rape are extremely rare tend to assume that the vast majority of rape reports that never get to trial were true. Although trials in the justice system are imperfect, they’re the best way we know to get to the truth of what happened. So, to assume over 90% of all rape reports are true purely on face value with no trial having happened isn’t good enough for me to then use them in a statistic. This figure is then compared to the very small number of men who successfully overturn a rape conviction- so it’s been through two trials. At the very least the studies should compare figures that have been through the same scrutiny and fact checking that occurs in the lead up to and during a trial.

The current methods used to come up with the statistics I have seen to date are questionable at best. It’s no better objectively than randomly deciding that all rape reports that never get to trial due to lack of evidence are all false. All the studies are following internal bias of one kind or another.

I don't think the poster was being sympathetic about rapists, she was talking about men who were wrongly accused and maybe ending up in prison for years.
I don't think anyone on here is advocating for rapists just saying you can't just lock someone up without evidence.

I know precisely what that poster was suggesting, and nowhere did I say she was sympathising with rapists. There are a lot of words being misinterpreted on this thread - I'll give you credit, @ancientgran having read your many sensible posts in the past, of assuming this interpretation is not willful.

The direct comparison was between victims of rape (I don't necessarily discount men from this BTW) diagnosed with PTSD, and men who have been wrongly abused of rape. According to this PP, it's equally as awful for the second group as those who have actually been victims of a particularly repulsive crime. All this comes from the position of having no idea what being a victim of this particularly repulsive crime is actually like. Not least having to cough up for 18 months' worth of EMDR therapy because you're so worried the memory loss and flashbacks are going to send you completely round the twist before you've begun to effect anything approaching a recovery. Or that it ate into your household income by over £10K because you're in need of help and all the mental health services are willing to give is a card with an emergency number in case you want to off yourself in the interim, and that the CBT they're offering as an end result isn't adequate? And I'm one of the 'lucky' ones. Who knew that getting proper help for extreme trauma (gang rape, for the record) was a matter of economic and social privilege.

I 'get' that a race to the bottom isn't valuable, and that a quest to be more of a victim than someone else is pretty pointless. But really - if that's the kind of daft, insulting thinking about women that underpins the support of Depp, women really are totally screwed, aren't we?

I also feel morally certain, although I only have the experience of one side, that being raped is far worse than being falsely accused of rape.

Agreed. Also rape and CSA victim with diagnosed and medicated cPTSD.
But I do think being falsely accused of rape is pretty fucking awful and not something we should just shrug and go oh well about. Or say we’ll only care about these “poor old innocent men” when other men, the real rapists, the actual bad men stop raping. I don’t think actually there is more sympathy for men falsely accused than for women rape victims. In most cases, these men have a dark cloud over them their entire life as the attitude is that where there is smoke there is fire, and if accused then he must have done something to deserve it, and being found “not guilty” doesn’t mean he is innocent and so on. I’ve heard that so many times about rape cases. That’s why some men, even after being cleared, still go on to commit suicide.

Oh, and there it is on this thread the attitude I was talking about, that the presumption is a man is guilty even if after a trial, he has been cleared of rape:

Statistically, a high proportion of those "not guilty" actually did rape someone, it just can't be proved

Its not actual statistics though, that’s just flowering up the above statement to make it seem like it has a basis in scientific factual research. When it doesn’t.

We know not all guilty get convicted and not all innocent are exonerated because we know the justice system is imperfect. But we do not know how many of each there are. We simply don’t, and anyone telling you otherwise is making up statistics.

Regardless of the outcome of this trial, it's quite apparent that many still do believe Johnny Depp is a rapist.

That is sentence that will follow him to his death.

Mainly because he decided to sue over it in two different jurisdictions.

He didn’t decide. It’s not like he could have sued the Sun in a US court. The Suns a British paper, he had to sue in a U.K. court.

As for the US seeing of AH for defamation, he did choose Virginia instead of California because he made the trial being televised a condition of the suit being filed and California didn’t want to televise, but Virginia was on board with it.

Ok. He decided to sue twice then. In two jurisdictions, as it happened. Only in the most recent trial has the allegation of rape been made publicly.

Exactly. Two different defendants both being sued for defamation. In the U.K., he lost and in the US he won. Resulting in contradictory verdicts as in one of them must be wrong imho as in he can’t be predominantly be both a battered husband victim per the US and wife beater abuser per the U.K.

While I do believe AH also abused him. There is always a power dynamic where one partner is the primary abuser and the other the primary victim- the victim often resorts to reactionary abuse they don’t just meekly submit. It’s never completely equal. There is no such thing as a perfect victim. So one person cannot be both the primary abuser and the primary victim.

The rape allegation will follow him the rest of his life whether true or not.

The JD and AH shitshow has raised more questions than it has answered.

I didn't know about the rape allegation until it came out live in the US trial.

I went into this with little knowledge of both sides, only glimpsing a few headlines over the years.

@Discovereads

apists, the actual bad men stop raping. I don’t think actually there is more sympathy for men falsely accused than for women rape victims. In most cases, these men have a dark cloud over them their entire life as the attitude is that where there is smoke there is fire, and if accused then he must have done something to deserve it, and being found “not guilty” doesn’t mean he is innocent and so on. I’ve heard that so many times about rape cases. That’s why some men, even after being cleared, still go on to commit suicide.
^^
This.
There was a man who killed himself during his trail -,2 days later he was found innocent.
That was a bother , son, husband father. ........
It's a witch hunt.

That's entirely on him and his team for pushing for a televised jury trial.
In the UK trial that was confidential.

He bought that on himself, no sympathy here.

Its not actual statistics though, that’s just flowering up the above statement to make it seem like it has a basis in scientific factual research. When it doesn’t.

Here's some statistics
rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/statistics-sexual-violence/

Only 1 in 100 rapes reported to the police in 2021 ended with a charge.

So how do you explain that? How many of those victims "made it up"?

And how many of the 99 men accused were innocent do you think?

I said: "Statistically, a high proportion of those "not guilty" actually did rape someone, it just can't be proved"

I stand by that when only 1 in 100 reported rapes result in charge.

And if you don't find that shocking then it's you that has a problem with empathy.

Apologies for the ShitTok video but this is a tiny part of the full audios (I've listened to all I can find).

I went into this and pretended to be a juror (sad I know but I'm recovering from an injury and it's kept my mind occupied). I avoided MSM , opinion pieces etc.

There were times I swayed on her testimonies, as I'm a woman and I had to hear her, you know, but cross examination came back etc. some of the stuff he's said made my toes curl....

I was shocked at the verdict. I honestly thought he'd lose on defamation. He just wanted to get his side across. Why did they unanimously decide on such an almost impossible case to win? I know they had full access to all evidence and recordings that we nor the UK trial had. I'll be very interested to hear from the jurors in the future.

This short recording, to me, tells me all I need to know. He mentions his finger too. She denies nothing and accuses him of nothing. Hours of audio is the same type of thing.

He said "what about all the times you hit me"

She replied "what about all the times you split?"

I didn't listen to the audios in full until towards the end of the trial. How she behaves and talks to him is not a woman who is afraid, she's abusive.

vm.tiktok.com/ZMNdnjUDk/?k=1

The judge called to the trial to be televised.

@AdamRyan
Only 1 in 100 rapes reported to the police in 2021 ended with a charge. So how do you explain that? How many of those victims "made it up"?
There is no way of knowing, that’s my point.

And how many of the 99 men accused were innocent do you think?
Again, impossible to know.

I said: "Statistically, a high proportion of those "not guilty" actually did rape someone, it just can't be proved"

How do you know if a rape actually occurred or not? And remember this is after a trial where investigations have been carried out, evidence gathered and presented and the man has been found not guilty in a court of law. So there has at least been a trial, the not guilty isn’t a presumption based on face value prejudice of “she lying”. You can’t possibly know how many men found not guilty actually raped someone, it is an unknown number. You are making an assumption that it is a “high proportion” and just tacking on the word “statistically” to make it sound all scientific and factual.

Finding the statistic of only 1 in 100 reports leading to a charge as shocking is a different matter altogether.

There was a man who killed himself during his trail -,2 days later he was found innocent.
That was a bother , son, husband father. ........
It's a witch hunt.

Obviously, that's a really horrific and tragic situation. We do know though that for a case to go to trial CPS has to deem there is enough evidence to do so. The majority of cases don't get that far.

Of course sometimes the system gets it wrong, and that's dreadful any time it happens. They doesn't constitute a witch hunt though.