Amber Heard Still Hasn’t Fully Paid ACLU Pledge From Divorce Settlement Because Of ‘Financial Difficulties’

ACLU is still waiting for Amber Heard to pay the $3.5 million she pledged from her divorce settlement from Johnny Depp.

In 2016, the “Drive Angry” star promised to split the $7 million between ACLU and the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Terence Dougherty, chief operating officer of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), gave a pre-recorded disposition on Thursday during Depp’s defamation suit against his ex-wife.

At the time of the Dec. 2021 recording, Dougherty said the nonprofit had only received $1.3 million from Heard. The foundation reached out in 2019 when payments had stopped and “learned she was having financial difficulties.”

Depp is suing Heard for her 2018 Washington Post op-ed about domestic abuse, although she never named him, Dougherty revealed the ACLU helped vet the draft.

Dougherty testified about the push-and-pull that occurred between first draft and publication — strategically timed by both the ACLU and Heard to coincide with the release of “Aquaman,” a movie in which she played a prominent role.

Depp sued in Fairfax County Circuit Court after the article was published, in which Heard says that “two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.” Depp’s lawyers say that’s a clear reference to abuse allegations she levied against Depp in 2016 that Depp says are untrue.

Dougherty testified that numerous ACLU lawyers reviewed the article at various stages, and asked Heard’s lawyers to review the piece as well to ensure it did not run afoul of a non-disclosure agreement she had with Depp in connection with the couple’s 2016 divorce.

During those discussions, Heard sent back an edited version approved by her lawyers that “specifically neutered much of the copy regarding her marriage,” according to an email from Jessica Weitz, an ACLU employee who coordinated with Heard.

According to the email, though, Heard was looking for a way to have a deleted passage restored to the article.

The various drafts of the articles were not shown to the jury so it’s not clear how many personal details were in the first draft and how much Heard’s lawyers had excised.

But the final version contains very little about Heard’s personal experiences. It doesn’t mention Depp at all. In addition to the passage about “a public figure representing domestic abuse,” in another passage she writes, “I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.”

Much of the article talks about legislative priorities for advocates of domestic abuse prevention. Other passages refer to parts of her personal life unrelated to Depp.

Dougherty testified that “the language that wound up in the final op-ed piece was very different from the original language” in the draft, Dougherty said. “It did not refer directly to Ms. Heard’s relationship with Johnny Depp.”

While the trial is supposed to be over whether Depp was defamed in the article, very little testimony in the first three weeks, leading up to Thursday, has related to the article itself or its contents. Heard’s lawyers predicted at the outset of the trial that it would become a mudslinging soap opera that would delve into messy details of Depp and Heard’s personal lives.

Heard’s lawyers, though, have said that even if the jury were to believe that she was never abused by Depp, Heard should still prevail in the lawsuit because the article is not about Depp, does not defame him, and Heard’s free-speech rights allow her to weigh in on matters of public importance like domestic violence.

With files from Associated Press.