I hate doing that and am forever deleting my own replies to people. Here's what came out as a result of the trial...

1. She presented evidence, photographs that had been manipulated. She said things like 'he repeatedly beat me in the face, whilst wearing a cast, and I thought he broke my nose'. She then appeared on TV the next day without a scratch on her face and claimed the makeup covered it. She said people saw her being hit but most witnesses came forward and said they'd never seen that happen. Many witnesses came out and said the opposite, they'd seen her be abusive towards him.

2. Sexual abuse certainly does leave evidence - and she claimed she had been raped with a bottle. She didn't seek medical treatment for this (some victims don't) but if you've experienced something like that, there would likely be medical records. Quite often injured people will seek medical help and lie about what happened to them to medical professionals. In her case there were no medical records at all of what was described as a horrific event which most likely would've caused serious injury. At the same time she talked about walking over broken glass but sought no medical treatment for that either.

3. mental abuse doesn't leave evidence, that much can be agreed... but we have to be very clear what the patterns of behaviour are between these people before we can decide who is inflicting mental abuse on whom. As it happens, I think both of them are doing it to each other (as a result of their respective childhood traumas) but the evidence that he enacted violence upon her was largely absent, whilst the evidence she was violent towards him was brought up with alarming regularity. The defence argued that it was clearly a case of mutual abuse, the prosecution argued 'you can't believe anything this woman says, you either believe it all or you believe none of it' - the jury believed none of it.

And there were in essence two trials going on, one in the court room and one on social media. The one in the court room was entirely fair and presided over by a skilled and competent judge - the one on social media was an absolute shit storm of misogny and awfulness... the exact opposite of the trial of Depp back in 2018 when everyone decided he was an abusive shitbag.

I think #MeToo is important and i think that's why it's important that the feminist movement gets behind Johnny Depp on this one. If after listening to all the evidence in the trial and listening to the testimonies of all the main people, you're still coming down on side Heard (in the court judgment for defamation alone) then I don't think you're taking a reasonable position. I think what you're doing is siding with a perpetrator of violent behaviour because it fits an internalised narrative of who abuses whom - and we have to decide that on a case by case basis, not based on the genitals of the main players. Feminism is about equality and that means equal treatment under the law - and this court case was. The media shitstorm can go to hell, that's unwarranted, but the case itself was entirely fine.

I'll have a look into the Nanavati trial - I've never heard of it - thanks for the heads up. :o)