Johnny Depp will donate his $1m settlement payment from Amber Heard to charity, his lawyers have revealed.
“We are pleased to formally close the door on this painful chapter for Mr. Depp, who made clear throughout this process that his priority was about bringing the truth to light,” Depp’s attorneys Benjamin Chew and Camille Vazquez wrote in a statement Monday, shortly after Heard announced that a settlement in the case had been made.
“The jury’s unanimous decision and the resulting judgement in Mr. Depp’s favor against Ms. Heard remain fully in place,” the attorneys added in a statement.
“The payment of $1M – which Mr. Depp is pledging and will (actually) donate to charities – reinforces Ms. Heard’s acknowledgement of the conclusion of the legal system’s rigorous pursuit for justice.”
On Monday morning, Heard, 36, announced in a statement shared to Instagram that she has made “a very difficult decision” to settle the defamation case brought against her by ex-husband Depp, 59, in Virginia, at which a seven-person jury found that Heard defamed Depp in her op-ed about domestic violence and he was awarded more than $10 million in damages.
“It’s important for me to say that I never chose this,” Heard wrote in her statement. “I defended my truth in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed. The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways women are re-victimised when they come forward.”
“Now I finally have an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago and on terms I can agree to,” she continued.
“I have made no admission. This is not an act of concession. There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward.”
