Actress Amber Heard has filed a defamation lawsuit against the comedian who accused her of blackmailing her husband Johnny Depp and making false domestic abuse allegations.
In the court documents, Amber alleges that Doug Stanhope and 20 complicit unnamed defendants “orchestrated a plot to write an article, which was published at TheWrap.com, which falsely accuses plaintiff Amber Heard of ‘blackmail’ and other criminal behaviour towards her husband, Johnny Depp, from whom she is seeking a divorce.”
Amber Heard has filed a defamation lawsuit against Doug Stanhope after he said she blackmailed Johnny Depp (Richard Vogel/AP/PA)
She calls his accusations “completely false and highly defamatory” and said they “have caused and will continue to cause her tremendous harm”.
Doug, a close friend of Johnny’s, wrote a guest column on website TheWrap.com two days after Amber was granted a restraining order against her estranged husband called “Johnny Depp Is Being Blackmailed by Amber Heard – Here’s How I Know.”
In it he claimed that Amber was “threatening to lie about him (Johnny) publicly in any and every possible duplicitous way if he didn’t agree to her terms” and that Johnny “got used, manipulated, set up and made to look like an a-hole” by her.
Doug Stanhope – London Fun December 2013 | Facebook
Her filing says that all the accusations are fabricated and part of a “calculated publicity campaign to smear Heard for having the temerity to file for divorce”.
“Defendants are engaged in a classic case of ‘attacking the victim,’ in an effort to discredit Heard, destroy her good name and reputation, and severely harm her hard-earned entertainment career, on top of the campaign of violence that Depp has inflicted upon her for years,” the suit claims.
Amber’s lawyer Charles J. Harder said she is seeking the “maximum possible jury award” which she will donate to a domestic violence shelter in Arizona “in an effort to counter the setback made to women by the defendants’ defamatory article and related wrongful acts”.
Amber accused Johnny of “nearly suffocating” her (Rich Fury/AP/PA)
The documents repeat her accusations in her restraining order application that Johnny has “hit and kicked” her on numerous occasions and has “thrown objects at her”.
They make the fresh claim that “at one point (Johnny) nearly suffocated her to the point where she feared for her life”.
In the papers, she calls him “an alcoholic and drug addict”, saying the abuse primarily occurred when he had “relapsed into a cycle of substance abuse”.
Amber Heard called Johnny “an alcoholic and drug addict” in court documents (Jordan Strauss/AP)
Amber said she stayed in the relationship “hoping optimistically that the man she married would change his behaviour”.
Johnny’s attorney Laura Wasser said in court documents related to the restraining order that Amber “is attempting to secure a premature financial resolution by alleging abuse”.
The couple met on the set of film The Rum Diaries in 2011 and married in February 2015. She filed for divorce on May 23.
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