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Psychiatrist who testified for Amber Heard recounts tide of 'horrific' and 'vile' social-media responses

Jun 3, 2022, 19:24 IST
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Dr. David Spiegel testifies in the courtroom at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia, on May 23, 2022.STEVE HELBER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
  • A psychiatrist who testified for Amber Heard said he got "vile" abuse after his court appearance.
  • Social media was filled with mocking clips of his testimony that left him "numb and dazed," he said.
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A psychiatrist who testified for Amber heard in Johnny Depp's defamation lawsuit against her said he may never agree to be an expert witness again after the "vile" abuse he received online.

"Never in my life have I been the target of such voluminous amounts of hate, ever," Dr David R. Spiegel wrote in an op-ed for Newsweek.

Social-media creators went into overdrive throughout the six-week trial, with commentators calling it "trial by TikTok".

Unrelated accounts made a sudden pivot to cover the trial, as The Washington Post reported, often vocally taking Depp's side and attacking Heard and those associated with her.

The phenomenon was so marked that Heard's lawyer said there was "no way" the jury was not influenced by it. Depp secured $10 million in damages, a verdict Heard plans to appeal.

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TikTok, YouTube and Twitter fixated on Spiegel after his May 23 court appearance in support of Heard's claims of domestic abuse.

Spiegel testified that Depp's behavior was consistent with a substance-abuse disorder and with someone "who is a perpetrator of intimate-partner violence," the BBC reported.

Depp's lawyers and fans questioned his ability to draw that conclusion without personally examining the star, a move they branded unethical.

Spiegel wrote on Friday that he had twice contacted Depp, with no response.

"I'm an expert at this," he wrote. "It's not like I saw one clip of Mr. Depp, and then said, 'Oh, let me judge this.'"

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He said that he'd studied the details of the case since he was first asked to be a witness in 2019.

Immediately after the testimony, Spiegel's WebMD page was flooded with negative reviews. YouTube videos of the encounter attracted what Spiegel described as "vile" comments.

TikTokers posted edited clips of an awkward exchange at his court appearance, adding mocking commentary about his mannerisms. The combined posts have had more than a million views.

"Cross examination is something you're never fully going to be prepared for, because you don't know exactly what they're going to do or say," Spiegel wrote.

About an hour after his appearance, his wife called him and warned him about a social-media backlash: "'Listen, I don't want you to look at what's being said,'" he quoted her as saying.

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The response was "horrific," he said. In the next 48 hours, he had what he described as "emotional concussion" that left him "numb and dazed."

"During my career, I have dealt with people who are not guilty of murder by reason of insanity and I've dealt with people who are psychotic and have threatened to kill me, and it has never fazed me one iota, but this did," he wrote.

He said he was disappointed that Depp didn't step in to ask his fans to stop. "The fact that he hasn't probably says potential volumes about him," wrote Spiegel.

"If I had groupies and I saw them attacking and harassing someone they don't know, I would have said what I said during the trial; that there are ways to express dissatisfaction, and then there are ways not to," he wrote.

The testimony has the potential to affect his career, Spiegel wrote, although he said many of his clients have been supportive.

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