Amber Heard claims text messages to father are evidence of physical abuse from Johnny Depp

The actor claims evidence not shown at trial supports her allegations

Amber Heard has claimed that text messages she sent to friends and family during her relationship with Johnny Depp are evidence of the physical abuse she suffered during their marriage.

In conjunction with an interview with Dateline’s Savannah Guthrie – the full version of which aired tonight (17 June), Heard’s legal team showed NBC reporters multiple messages.

In a text message she claims to have sent to her therapist dated 16, dated 16 December 2015, Heard wrote: “Johnny did a number on me tonight. I’m safe and with my support tonight but I need some real help. Can I come tomorrow. I called earlier because I thought I had a concussion and didn’t know if I should have called police. But I have a nurse close to me.”

Guthrie’s team was also shown a text message Heard claims she sent her father in 2014, around the same time that Heard alleges Depp kicked her on an airplane. That incident was the subject of testimony in the couple’s defamation trial, which concluded earlier this month.

Heard’s message to her father allegedly reads: “I keep not fighting back. He literally kicked me and called me a [redacted] in front of everyone on the plane. It’s humiliating”.

Depp claims he did not attack Heard on an airplane. The judge in the trial deemed the text messages inadmissible in court, according to Guthrie.

Elsewhere in the interview, Heard claimed her therapist kept contemporaneous notes of the physical abuse she suffered while in a relationship with Depp, which were similarly withheld from the jury.

“There’s a binder worth of years of notes dating back to 2011, from the very beginning of my relationship, that were taken by my doctor who I was reporting the abuse to," said Heard.

Guthrie and her reporting team looked at the notes to confirm what Heard had been telling her therapist since 2012.

“Her notes represented years of real-time explanations of what was going on,” explained The Aquaman actor in the interview, which aired in full on Friday (17 June). Portions of the interview had previously aired throughout the week.

Depp has always denied any assault of Heard.

Depp’s team released a statement to NBC regarding Heard’s claims without mentioning her by name:

“It’s unfortunate that while Johnny is looking to move forward with his life, the defendant and her team are back to repeating, reimagining and re-litigating matters that have already been decided by the Court and a verdict that was unanimously and unequivocally decided by a jury in Johnny’s favour.”

Earlier today Heard’s spokesperson also issued a statement in response: “If Mr Depp or his team have a problem with this, we recommend that Johnny himself sit down with Savannah Guthrie for an hour and answer all her questions.”

The Pirates of the Caribbean actor sued his former partner Amber Heard for allegedly implying he abused her in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed about domestic violence. Heard countersued and a jury trial on the defamation claims concluded 2 June, with a verdict mostly in Depp’s favour.

The jury found that Heard defamed Depp on all three counts and awarded him $10m (£8m) in compensatory damages and $5m (£4m) in punitive damages. Heard was awarded $2m (£1.6m) in compensatory damages, but no punitive damages.