People here really aren't going to like this, but reading this thread has been incredibly difficult for me. As someone who went through emotional/verbal abuse (not partner related, but familial) as a child, the people trying to claim Depp has shown no abuse or there's evidence its only retaliatory are just plain wrong. His own actions/videos/evidence show abuse. That video of him destroying their kitchen for example? That's emotional abuse. Believe me, as someone who has stood in a room while a family member tore it apart, terrified that at any moment they might turn that rage against me, even though they had never actually hit me, that's abuse. It creates a trauma that can stay with you for the rest of your life. Perhaps her behavior drove him to a place where he reacted that way, but we don't know that. That so many want to go to that place speaks a lot to the tribalism that people are clutching at here, for some reason desperate to take sides in a situation that has nothing to do with them. I see people demanding proof from her, the sort of proof that most abuse victims simply will never have, while talking about things he has no proof of other than his own testimony as "proven". Its just weird, especially on a forum that likes to think of itself as progressive. A lot of it is full on misogynistic and would be getting called out much more strongly if the vast majority hadn't decided she's lying and so apparently misogyny against her is fine.
Beyond that, I think there's a few things people here have quickly forgotten from the Me Too movement that they should perhaps remember. Things like:
That one of the main reasons we believe people when they say they're victims of abuse is that there often isn't strong physical evidence. That people in abusive situations often intentionally don't document everything, and what they do choose to document often isn't what we would logically think they should, in large part due to the shame that goes along with being in an abusive situation for many.
That memories are fallible in the best of times, and that those dealing with trauma often are worse, which means picking apart little details that ultimately don't matter isn't the win some like to think it is. The whole deal over the makeup compact that somehow turned into a huge story is a great example of this. Worth pointing out that something she said wasn't true pretty definitively? Sure, but it isn't exactly a smoking gun. Perhaps she mixed it up with another similar product she used, the brand of the item was in no way central to her testimony.
That there are no perfect victims and no right way to be a victim. TONS of people in here saying how they wouldn't react the way she is on the stand, how she goes from upset to okay too quick, that they wouldn't do what she did. This is the EXACT sort of gross nonsense that has been used against abuse victims since the beginning of time, the EXACT sort of thing that Me Too has been trying to get us away from. People react in all sorts of ways, for all sorts of reasons. Whether its just because they're a different person, because they have their own issues and conditions which can impact how their emotions work, because they've set mental defense mechanisms that they use to cope, and many, many more. Certainly most of the people here aren't clinical psychologists and certainly none have examined these people. Thinking we have a perfect window into who they are based on a few reactions over a few days is gross. Full stop.
That even if someone is "performing" as so many want to claim, a claim which you have no way of knowing since none of you know Heard well enough in her day to day life to know if this is just how she is, that doesn't mean the person isn't telling the truth. Every lawyer putting their client on the stand walks their client through what they're going to say ahead of time, goes over potential questions, the best ways to answer them, the sort of demeanor they want to portray on stand, how to get the best reaction from a jury. That's normal for any trial, let alone one that's being watched by the entire world. I'm sure she is trying to come across a certain way, for that matter so is he, he's just a bit better at it. Not a surprise, anyone who has watched both of them act over the years knows which is the better actor. That doesn't in any significant way speak to guilt or innocence.
Eye witnesses to such behavior are often rare. Its far from uncommon for abusers to be able to be charming, funny, personable, and the last person anyone would suspect of such behavior. People in their lives will often talk about how great they are. In this particular case it probably doesn't help Heard's case that most of the people around them throughout their marriage were his friends and employees, she had much less of a support system around and thus less potential witnesses to call upon likely to stand in her corner.
None of that means she's not lying. She could be. No one has actually proven she's doing so though, outside of minor inconsistencies that can easily be explained by the passage of time and a mind dealing with trauma. None of them prove the large points of what she says didn't happen. He has certainly presented some evidence that she was abusive at times, though the many people here eager to point out that his worst moments could just be in retaliation to her behavior haven't seemed to consider that the opposite could be true as well for some of her behavior. Between this and the Mackenzie Fierceton thread though I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to stay out of any threads going forward that have to do with abuse because the behavior here in regards to this stuff has put me in a very dark place and brought back some of the exact feelings I had going through this sort of stuff growing up. Whole lot of people thought my dad was this nice, funny, charming guy who would never hurt anybody, couldn't possibly be an abusive piece of garbage, and took a lack of physical evidence to mean that my mom, me and my brother were making it up, or at the very least exaggerating. I thought society was getting better but if this is how even this place is reacting, man, that scares me.