Men throughout the ‘developed’ world owe Johnny Depp a great deal of gratitude. He has bravely stood up in an anti-male witch-hunt era to challenge what he claimed were false allegations. Not many men have the money to do this and he has invested heavily in doing so.

Feminists and a compliant justice system are increasingly acting as though allegations are never false, or if they are it’s not very important. For those who haven’t seen any of the YouTube videos of the JD proceedings, especially Ms Heard’s efforts to make herself cry as she told her stories, it’s worth a look. The psychologist and psychiatrist expert witnesses are also worth seeing with JD’s experts both doing a thorough, ethical job and critiquing the shoddy work of the experts for Ms Heard’s side. The lawyers’ summing up was also interesting. Despite the US law being somewhat different from NZ, the similarities were surprising and observing the proceedings would provide a lot of knowledge that might be useful should any man ever face formal allegations of partner violence. And man, it’s a better Court drama than most that you would see on tv or movies!

Public release of the entire trial (minus legal discussions between counsels and judge) was impressive and has confronted the public with important issues, for example:
It has discredited the demand by #metoo and other feminist supporters that women’s allegations should always be believed.
It has shown that a man can be the victim of malicious partner violence committed by a woman.
It has proven that false allegations can easily be made and repeated for various reasons.
It has reminded the public of the extent to which people can go to manufacture evidence of violence against them.
It has highlighted the foolishness of prejudging cases by referring to accusers as ‘victims’ before their accusations have been properly tested.
It has highlighted the foolishness of treating a woman’s apparent crying in Court as if it’s evidence supporting her allegations, which unfortunately is often what guilty verdicts against men are based on.
It has educated the people about Borderline Personality Disorder, the huge emotional distress associated with this disorder and its distortion of a sufferer’s thinking that facilitates malicious attacks and false allegations some of which are actually believed by the accuser.
It has highlighted how unfair it can be in partner violence cases to categorize one party as ‘victim’ even when that same party was also the predominant perpetrator of violence.
It has highlighted the fallacy of categorizing parties as ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ at all because in this case (as in the majority of partner violence cases) both parties were violent to each other in various ways.

The judge in this case deserves great respect for avoiding unnecessary disruption and for avoiding gender-biased management of these proceedings. Full public scrutiny of these proceedings is likely to have helped maintain good balance, whereas many cases involving allegations of partner or domestic violence are conducted in secret without public scrutiny. Sadly, Courts far too often stack the scales of justice against a male accused, as indeed have law changes over recent decades including last year’s Sexual Violence Legislation Act 2021 passed by the Ardern government (in the previous government NZ First stopped Ardern’s lot from passing this legislation because of its threat to justice for accused).

Sadly, only an unrealistic optimist might hope the Johnny Depp case will start to swing justice systems again towards fairness for accused men.