Amid Johnny Depp‘s defamation trial against Amber Heard, the actress’ sister Whitney Heard Henriquez took the stand to share her own recollection of their marriage.
While under oath, Henriquez opened up about an alleged incident in 2013 after Depp, 58, saw Heard, 36, photographed with another woman. According to Henriquez, the trio were in a car when she heard commotion from the backseat.
“At some point, I heard the back window open, and he was holding out dog out the window,” Henriquez claimed on Wednesday, May 18. “I froze, I was scared, I just remember thinking I knew how inebriated he was and the dog was very small. I thought if he twitched, she was just going to go out the window.”
She continued: “He brought the dog back into the car and was laughing this really scary loud, it was almost like a cackle. He made a joke about putting her in the microwave, putting the dog in the microwave.”
For Henriquez, it was difficult to witness the tumultuous romance between Heard and Depp. “In hindsight, it was like watching a slow-motion gunshot,” she recalled, noting that she saw a change in her older sister. After the Aquaman star started dating Depp, she allegedly stopped sleeping and was “so physically unwell” that she lost a significant amount of weight.
During her testimony, Henriquez also accused the Dark Shadows actor of controlling Heard throughout their marriage. The Kentucky native’s attorney Rebecca Lecaroz questioned why Henriquez didn’t step in to help her sister leave the relationship, to which she responded, “That’s really oversimplifying something that’s far from simple. Again, Amber was very much in love, so was Johnny. She’s telling me that she wants something. Whether or not I agreed to it or not, whether or not I was OK with what was happening, it wasn’t my place.”
The ongoing trial between Depp and Heard comes after the Oscar nominee sued his ex-wife for an op-ed she wrote about her history with abuse in December 2018. The Texas native penned the article two years after her divorce from Depp, but didn’t mention his name.
The pair first sparked romance rumors after meeting on the set of The Rum Diary in 2009. They exchanged vows six years later and Heard filed for divorce after 15 months of marriage. Days later, she accused the Nightmare on Elm Street star of domestic violence and obtained a temporary restraining order against him.
Depp has denied Heard’s accusations and claimed that her article for The Washington Post harmed his career in Hollywood.
The Pineapple Express star, for her part, alleged that she wasn’t referring to her ex-husband while taking the stand on Monday, May 16. “It’s not about Johnny. The only person who thinks it is about Johnny is Johnny. It’s about me and what happened to me,” she said while visibly emotional.
Heard also addressed her past claims that Depp abused her, saying, “Unfortunately, all of this is real. I narrowly survived it, but I survived it. I tried to protect Johnny — and the secret I tried hard to keep for five years.”
According to Heard, she never filed charges against Depp because she didn’t want to harm him. “I was scared and very conflicted because the person I was scared of was also the person I was in love with,” she explained, adding that it was difficult for her to end their marriage in 2015. “I knew that if I didn’t, I’d likely not literally survive. I was so scared that it was going to end really badly for me, and I really didn’t want to leave him.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.
