Sure, we shouldn’t be disregarding Amber Heard’s allegations that Johnny Depp abused her during their year-long marriage. Of course, we need to take victims seriously until proven otherwise, as we have seen too many scenarios of domestic abuse result in hospital visits, or even worse, death.

And sure, Johnny Depp will now be added to a long list of actors accused of abuse.

But never before have any one of those accused actors been so publicly backed by loved ones like Johnny Depp has. From his wife and daughters having his back (HERE), now one of his closest friends, Doug Stanhope [pictured below], sheds lights on the relationship between the two:

It’s almost 4 a.m. and I can’t sleep. Not even dozing off. Today, a friend of mine was pilloried in the press for domestic violence. Coupled with a picture of his wife with a bruise, he was murdered on social media.

I watched it happen and I didn’t say a f—ing word.

Even though I knew it was bulls—.

We’d watched it build like this since before they were married. We’d watched her manipulate and f— with him for years. We didn’t say a word. To each other, yes, but never to him.

When your friend is in an awful, abusive relationship — man or woman — and you risk weighing in that their counterpart is a demon, you know the odds are they will jump right back into the fire and then dump you from their life for being honest.

Most of us have been on one or both sides of this coin. Choosing to be blinded, or removing the people who have clearer eyes that can guide you.

The fact that Hollywood and the entertainment industry at large — f—, society as a whole — turns a blind eye to domestic violence is abhorrent.

But the tides have turned in such a way that the mere allegation that such a crime has occurred leaves the person accused as guilty without due process.

My girlfriend, Bingo, and I have known Johnny Depp for a few years now. We have watched Amber Heard f— with him at his weakest — or watched him at his weakest from being f—ed with — for the entire time we’ve known him.

And we didn’t say s—.

Because he’s Johnny Depp.

And we didn’t want to be thrown out of the circle for saying that The Emperor was being Stripped of His Clothes.

It isn’t my place to name people who agreed with us but I couldn’t name one person closely associated with him that didn’t feel the same.

But nobody said s— to his face.

Bingo and I were at Johnny’s house for most of that Saturday until just before the alleged assault. We assumed initially that his dour mood was because of his mother’s death the day before. But he opened up in the most vulnerable of ways that it was not only his mother, but that Amber was now going to leave him, threatening to lie about him publicly in any and every possible duplicitous way if he didn’t agree to her terms. Blackmail is what I would imagine other people might put it, including the manner in which he is now being vilified.

We stopped not saying s—.

Bingo and I together, and then separately, told him how much we were aware of this manipulative a–hole, how his closest circle had all agreed on this since the day we met and that we all feared that telling him outright might alienate us all.

Love makes you do funny things.

I told him the truth and I half-expected to be asked to leave. But I wasn’t seeing Johnny Depp. I saw a naked Emperor. And we told him to get dressed.

You can read the rest of his account HERE and make up your own mind. But yes, spreading these kinds of rumours aren’t going to get either of them anywhere because it’s easy for Amber to add to the story or deny the allegations thanks to her lawyer, Peter Sample:

The allegations against Ms. Heard are absolutely and unequivocally false. The claim of blackmail by Depp’s friend Doug Stanhope has no basis in reality and is nothing but the typical celebrity muckraking for profit.

By the sound of things he isn’t the only celeb looking to make a profit out of this.

[source: thewrap&thewrap]

[imagesource:here]