Amber Heard denies assistant claims that she was 'regularly verbally and mentally abusive'

Kate James said working for Heard was an 'exercise in daily humiliation'
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Megan C. Hills12 March 2020

Amber Heard has denied her former assistant Kate James’ allegations that she was “regularly verbally and mentally abusive”. The claims emerged in court documents seen by The Blast.

Heard, who has both accused and been accused by her ex-husband Johnny Depp of domestic abuse, branded her a “disgruntled former employee” in a denial.

Speaking to The Blast, her spokesperson said, “This is a statement from a disgruntled former employee who was fired for poor performance and clearly has an agenda and an axe to grind. These ridiculous allegations have no basis in fact and no relevance to these proceedings.”

Amber Heard
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Depp has filed a $50 million defamation suit against Amber Heard in Virginia, claiming Heard’s essay about being a victim of abuse for the Washington Post “depends on the central premise that Ms. Heard was a domestic abuse victim and that Mr. Depp perpetrated violence against her” - alleging she is “not a victim of domestic abuse; she is a perpetrator.”

Heard has denied the claims.

James, who worked for Heard between 2012 and 2015, characterised Heard as a “classic bully” and said she was “permanently scarred by the experience.”

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp in 2016
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She also delved into the abuse allegations that both parties had levelled against each other, claiming she “never saw any sign of an altercation, or even the aftermath of a serious and messy fight in the way that Amber describes” despite being with Heard nearly every day for three years.

She said, “Amber was regularly verbally and mentally abusive and would often scream at me in that way, over the smallest things. She would fly into blind rages where no-one could reason with her, and even if I was trying to offer an explanation, I didn’t think that she could hear me as she was so angry.”

Claiming her time with Heard had affected “my mental and physical health”, she said, “I ultimately became emaciated due to the extreme stress and the fact I had no time to eat with the crazy workload she bombarded me with constantly.”

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She also alleged that following Heard’s continued usage of drugs including MDMA and mushrooms, Heard would reportedly lash out at James in a string of texts - which she claims have now been deleted.

James said, “The assortment of drugs and a great deal of wine would mean that when I woke up in the morning, there would almost always be a barrage of incoherent abuse sent to me from Amber by text between around 2am and 4am. I discovered later that she had gone ahead and deleted all evidence of abusive texts from that ICloud account.”

Other encounters James described with Heard included one in which Heard missed a flight connection over Christmas.

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James, who says she was with her aunt who was visiting at the time, claimed the star then called her “screaming abuse at me for literally hours as though I had made it snow and caused the disruptions to the flight.

She also described how Heard had reportedly been “very controlling and paranoid about anyone else being in [Johnny Depp’s] space”, which included her.

Characterising Depp as a “thoughtful and kind, and a genuinely decent person”, James said, “Amber hated me talking to Johnny, even if it was just polite small-talk, she would give me the evil eye if she found me having a conversation with him.”

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She continued that she would sometimes bring her son to work with her and recounted how Depp “would be there and would hang out with him, teaching him how to play the guitar.”

She said, “I would never have left my son with Johnny while I was working if I had any concerns about him whatsoever.”

Calling working for Heard an “exercise in daily humiliation”, she said, “With the benefit of hindsight, I now recognise Amber’s behaviour towards me as mental abuse. It still makes me extremely emotional to speak of my experience of working for her. I feel that I am permanently scarred by the experience.”

“I felt constantly embarrassed that someone so much younger than me could make me feel so worthless. Amber was a classic bully. She enjoyed making me feel stupid,” she finished.

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She later touched on Heard’s allegations that Depp had abused her, saying, “In the three years that I worked for Amber, I would go to her house almost every day, including on weekends. I would not announce when I was going to attend the apartment to drop things off or pick things up, so it would regularly be without notice. I never saw any sign of an altercation, or even the aftermath of a serious and messy fight in the way that Amber describes in her statements.”

She continued that she “never saw any physical violence by either Amber or Johnny”. James claimed, “I understand that the period of my employment overlaps with the majority of incidents in which Amber has alleged that Johnny was violent towards her.”

“I never once saw any bruising, swelling, or any evidence of what could have resulted from violence. I would often see her naked, or semi-naked, when she was getting dressed or at fittings. I was around her a lot, often 7 days a week,” she said.

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Over the course of Depp’s defamation suit, the pair have accused one another of domestic abuse as revealing documents and audio recordings have been released.

In the wake of the suit, Heard is said to have filed 300 pages of documents delving into Depp’s alleged abuse of her which claim he abused her prior to and during their marriage - adding pictures of herself with ‘bruises on her face, scars on her arms and hair allegedly torn from her head’ according to USA Today.

Over the course of her divorce, she claimed in a deposition that Depp had another personality “the part of him that is present when he beats me up” that they called “the monster” - which she said “petrified her.”

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Heard also alleged that Depp had thrown her phone “as hard as he could”, hitting her in the face, and that he grabbed her by the hair as he “broke a lot of glass things that left glass on the floor.”

An LAPD officer who arrived on the scene to investigate a call made to 911 claimed that ‘she did not see any marks, bruises, swelling or signs of injury’ on Heard’s face and she also said that there was ‘no signs of shattered glass or broken items’ - a testimony that another LAPD officer supported according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Depp alleged that things happened differently that night, claiming that Heard became “aggressive and violent” after he was late to her birthday dinner - which led her to punch him twice in the face.

He also alleged that Heard had thrown a glass bottle at him on another occasion, which shattered and severed his fingertip.

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A leaked 2015 audio recording between Depp and Heard during a therapy session was also recently revealed, in which they discussed Heard hitting Depp.

She was heard saying, “Babe, you're not punched ... I don't know what the motion of my actual hand was, but you're fine. I did not hurt you, I did not punch you, I was hitting you.”

Depp later said “I do not want a divorce, I do not want you out of my life. I just want peace. If things get physical, we have to separate” - to which Heard said that she “can’t promise you I won’t get physical again.”

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Following the tape, Depp’s lawyer claimed, “It exposes that Ms. Heard perpetrated serial violence against Mr. Depp, and then concocted an elaborate abuse hoax to cover it up. Ms. Heard gives a motive for her violence: Mr. Depp was always trying to 'split' to escape her abuse.”

In response, Heard’s lawyer said, “The fact that a woman fights or talks back does not mean that she has not been the subject of repeated domestic violence and abuse. It’s a myth to say, as Mr. Depp apparently is implying, that if Ms. Heard slapped him, then she can’t also be a victim. That is just not true.”

Depp is set to appear in UK court on March 23, in which he is suing News Group Newspapers for defamation over a 2018 article which called him a “wifebeater.”

Johnny Depp has appeared in court
AP

In the lead up to the appearance, his lawyers accidentally shared 70,000 text messages from Depp which included texts in which he told actor Paul Bettany, “Let’s burn Amber!!! Let's drown her before we burn her!!! I'll f**k her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she's dead.”

The trial for Depp’s defamation suit against Heard is set to take place on August 3 this year.

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