Trading gossip about Amber Heard and Johnny Depp could cost lives

The strongest weapon in the vast armoury of the abuser is silence. In accusing Heard of telling lies, we are handing a weapon to someone who lives next door or sits on the school board

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp photographed before their separation (Getty)

As humans, we have a voracious appetite for gossip. We might pretend we don’t check the “sidebar of shame” for the latest celebrity tittle-tattle, or strain our ears when we hear our neighbours rowing, but something in our DNA always makes us want to know more.

Just last week my evening was interrupted by the unmistakeable sound of a couple having sex. Did I close the window and turn up the music? Did I heck; I leaned in to listen, trying to work out where it was coming from, and if she was faking it. I decided – without any evidence whatsoever – that below my flat a sordid office affair was being conducted. And that she was probably faking it.

Which is the conclusion of the internet gossip-mongers over Amber Heard’s claims that Johnny Depp allegedly assaulted her last week.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter what we think happened. We weren’t there and we don’t know either of the parties involved any more than I know my neighbours. But that doesn’t seem to matter to those keen to take a judgement on the woman in question. The claims against Depp have not been substantiated.

By wading into the wider debate on domestic violence, casting our opinions this way and that, we are putting the lives of thousands of women and men at risk. Domestic violence affects one in four women and one in six men in the UK – that’s almost as many women as cancer affects in the UK, and we all know someone who has had cancer.

The chances are that we all know someone who is, or has been, a victim of domestic violence, whether we realise it or not. On average two women are killed every week, and 30 men each year, as a result of domestic abuse.

The strongest weapon in the vast armoury of the abuser is silence. In accusing Heard of telling lies – even if it turns out she is – we are handing a weapon to someone who could even live next door to us, be on the invite to our summer barbecue, or sit on the school board; someone who silently, and behind closed doors, reigns terror and violence on their partner.

The claim that if Heard – wealthy, beautiful and successful as she is – had been a victim of domestic abuse then she would have left her husband earlier ignores the fact that only 35 per cent of all domestic violence incidents are ever reported to the Police.

In exchanging gossip about the private lives of two famous people we’ll never know, what are we telling those women and men who have been too afraid to report their abuse, for fear of not being believed?

A victim of domestic abuse doesn’t openly walk into the arms of a violent man or woman, they walk into the arms of someone charming, loving and complimentary. They walk into the arms that everyone outside the relationship sees, when they talk about the person who ‘couldn’t possibly have been abusive’. Could they?