Voices: What will happen to women after the Depp v Heard verdict?

In solidarity. God, I can’t believe that’s my opening line. What now for women?

I’ll tell you what this means for women across the world: if you speak up against sexual violence you will face our culture’s wrath. The sick, twisted irony is that Amber Heard was sure as hell right when she said that men have power and institutions support that power. I just didn’t expect her argument to be made so clearly in her own court case.

But she was wrong about one thing: “These institutions are beginning to change”, she wrote. The tide is not changing. The consequences of this court case will reverberate across our society for the rest of my lifetime – and yours. It sends a strong message to survivors; including my very own clients who have messaged me in absolute despair about what this case will mean for them.

Depp won his defamation case against Heard after a long, bitter fight in a Virginia Courtroom that was opened up to the heckles, shaming and mocking of the world. It’s rare for the entire world to see inside a trial about sexual violence and domestic abuse.

The jury found that Heard had defamed Depp, acting with “malice”, when she described herself as a victim of domestic abuse. Now she has to pay him $15 million in damages. She won part of her counter-claim after Depp’s legal team defamed Heard when they said her account of abuse was “a hoax”, so she gets $2 million in damages. The jury’s decision is baffling – on the one hand she defamed him by suggesting he was a perpetrator but on the other hand one member of his legal team defamed her by saying she made false allegations? Bizarre.

As I sat in front of my iPad watching the courtroom on YouTube, I was staggered by how normal the courtroom looked. It looked like any court in most of Britain and some of the courts I’ve seen on TV in the US. Clinical, cold, ordered, powerful. Everyone sat in their places looking formal, sitting upright. A pin could have dropped and you would have heard it. After the verdict was read, I saw Amber Heard look down and she looked in physical pain. I had knots in my stomach. Depp was nowhere to be seen. He was touring in the UK, hailing his adoring fans.