Dr. Leslie Lesley (0:00)

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In just one year, the network has launched 15 show shows and built a community united by passion podcasts that amplify the voices of women in sports. Thank you for supporting iHeart women's sports and our founding sponsors, E L F Beauty, Capital One and Novartis. Just open the free iHeart app and search iHeart Women's Sports to listen now. Oh, hey, welcome to Intentionally disturbing. I am Dr. Leslie, forensic psychologist. Now normally on the show I Interview other people. I love hearing interesting and disturbing stories, as you know. But I've had a lot of people ask me about my analysis of some very high profile cases and cases that my friends and colleagues have been involved in. So right now I want to take this opportunity as somebody who has been heavily trained in the treatment of trauma, working in prisons and working at the VA and in criminal and civil litigation, very focused on truth telling and how do we determine the truth? How do we know if a woman is actually telling the truth? How do we know if a guy being accused of sexual assault is telling the truth? Today I want to use my expertise in order to analyze one of the most controversial and polarizing cases we have seen recently. Let's look at Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. But I want to be clear, this isn't tmz. I'm not here for tabloid drama. I want to dissect a case that turned into a psychological battlefield. And I wanna help you guys understand, especially those of you who are not experts in this field in legal stuff, in psychology, in law. I want you to understand what happened in that trial and how important the psy were in that trial. So we had dueling diagnoses in an extremely high stakes trial and testimony. And two of my colleagues evaluated Amber Heard and they testified to those evaluations. I want to review Dr. Shannon Curry's assessment and Dr. Don Hughes and how they came to different diagnoses that really changed the outcome of this trial. They came to vastly different conclusions of Amber Heard's mental state. And I think that directly impacted how the jury looked at her and how they decided on this case. What I hope you'll come to understand over the course of this episode is that we are publicizing psychological assessments. This trial played out in the media. That's not normal, a psychological assessment. The darkness, the insight of a human being is not usually publicized. If you think of Charles Manson, we finally got his analysis once he was dead because he asked for that and it was agreed upon. He was going to give information about these killings if people didn't put the private psychological assessments out there until he was gone. But here we have a young woman, Amber Heard, and her psychological assessment is being blasted across the Internet for everyone, with or without experience to pick apart. Her mental illness was turned into clickbait and diminished the complexities of an incredibly complicated legal battle with a powerful, wealthy, I have to say, violent, famous, ex husband, Johnny Depp. So let's talk about this trial. What was it really about? This wasn't a domestic Violence trial in a criminal sense. This was a civil defamation trial. Johnny Depp sued amber heard for $50 million over a 2018 Washington Post op ed in which she described herself as a survivor of domestic violence. Now, she didn't name Johnny Depp, but she was clearly talking about him. And that's what this case started with. His team argued that the article was obviously referring to him and that it damaged his reputation and career. Well, what does Amber do? She countersues Depp for $100 million, claiming that his attorney defamed her by labeling her abuse allegations as a hoax. So here at the core, we are asking 12 random people in this jury to decide. Did Amber Heard defame Depp? Was it indirect? Was her abuse narrative false? Was it exaggerated? Did Johnny Depp's attorney defame her in return? But to answer those questions, the jury had to evaluate the credibility. And that's where psychological testimony comes in. Was Amber Heard a survivor of intimate partner violence or was she an aggressor? Was Johnny Depp a survivor? Was he an aggressor? Were the behaviors that we saw consistent with trauma or were they manipulation? It's hard to say entirely, but I'll give you a little glimpse into what I think. There are good parts of both these people and there are bad parts of both these people. But before I give my opinion on Amber, I want to explain the psychological assessment batteries that were used by my colleagues to flesh out this case. Two licensed psychologists were called to testify, both with very different conclusions and both with very different psychological assessments. Dr. Shannon Curry was hired by Johnny Depp's team. Now she's a clinical and forensic psychologist. Like me, she's down here in Southern California. Like me. She conducted an in person psychological evaluation of Amber Heard over two days. That's pretty average. And she administered multiple psychological tests. Now, I have to say her tests were better than Dawn's. Who? I'll get to the other psychologists. Her tests were way more grounded in science. There was way more research behind them. And she had tests that offered an ability to understand that even if Amber had stressors and traumas in her life, we have to rank them. And we're not looking at your whole life. We're looking at things that happened with Johnny Depp. We're looking at things that were named in the complaint that not her whole life. One part I have to add is that Shannon definitely had some questionable behaviors in this case. Amber's attorneys really tried to harp on that. Shannon made homemade muffins and brought them to Amber the day of testing. So normally this would feel like a very adversarial day for a defendant or a plaintiff to go up against a psychologist who's hired by the other team. Now were the muffins manipulative? How did that play into to Amber's time when she knew that Dr. Curry was not hired by her team? Dr. Curry was hired by the team that was suing her for $100 million. Now psychologists are trained to be ethical. Psychologists are not biased when they go into this. We take into account every bit of information before we form an opinion. But what does that mean for the person in front of us and how they are perceiving us? How did did Amber perceive Shannon? At the end of the evaluation and record review, Shannon determined that Amber met criteria for borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder. Now those are extremely heavy hitting disorders because those are personality disorders. They're not moving mood disorders. She is saying that Amber is diagnosably somebody who will always be like this and it's not going to change that. Her personality, the borderline part is comprised of emotional dysregulation, intense mood swings. She can't find her baseline of mood or emotions when she's in distress. She has chronic feelings of emptiness. Shannon said that Amber has unstable relationships. She has very intense short lived relationships. She tends to idolize people when they come into her life and then quickly splits away from them and devalues them. Now this testimony was important because we saw a lot of people testify that Amber's team pulled up, but they didn't want to be there. She I think it was rocky. We had a lot of people saying, you know, I used to be friends with her and I'm not anymore. So it shows that that devaluation and that splitting and that lack of consistent long term relationships. Borderline personality disorder is also characterized by identity disturbance. So an individual is unable to really see who they are. They don't have a stable self image. I compare it a lot to shattered glass. It's hard to figure out how to put it all back together because it's so shattered. It's not as clear as a puzzle that we're putting back together with different people. In therapy. They often have sudden shifts in their goals, in their values, but also in their perception. They can't always trust their perception. One of the biggest parts of borderline personality is a fear of abandonment, which we saw a lot in this trial. There were frantic efforts in the midst of physical violence with Johnny Depp. Where Amber came back now is that coercive control? Or is that more of her personality disorder saying I can't be alone. I can't be without someone. Not him someone, because I can't be alone with myself because I don't know who I am. We're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back. There's nothing like sinking into luxury. @washablesofas.com you'll find the Annabe sofa which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price. And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom. Starting at only $699, the stain resistant performance fabric slipcovers and cloud like frame duvet can go straight into your wash. Perfect for anyone with kids, pets or anyone who loves an easy to clean spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slipcovers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style. Whether you need a single chair, loveseat or a luxuriously large sectional, Annabe has you covered. Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home. Right now you can shop up to 60% off store wide with a 30 day money back guarantee. Shop now@washablesofas.com Add a little to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. A foot washed up, a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA using new scientific tools. They're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at othram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1940 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think in the New York Daily News. It's Teddy escapes, blonde drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you the story really became about ted's political future, Ted's political hopes. Will Ted become President? Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal the Kennedys have lived through. Disgrace, affair, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Pretty Private with ebony, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebony and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all. Childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles and more. And found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant. But he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect podcast network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A large component of this is also triggers impulsivity. Individuals with borderline personality disorder struggle to not react to things that are triggering. They can be very self destructive. So even if they are in a relationship that's healthy, they may make the relationship unhealthy because chaos is at least something that they can identify with. And I know that's really hard to hear at times, but again, we're talking about the nuances of personality and the mind and no one is ever a very clear person. Borderlines are often quite paranoid at times and I think this stems largely from a lack of trust in themselves. So if they're stressed out, like in a volatile relationship, they are going to not know who they are almost to the point where they depersonalize and they can present as psychotic. They can lift off from reality and their perception. Their movement in the world isn't what you and I are seeing. That was a part of this case, they showed moments where Amber wasn't herself, and no one really understood why. Now, when she was testifying, we could also see that at times she seemed like she was overacting, underacting, that she was presenting herself purposely in certain ways because of what was being talked about. So with this psychological assessment and the word borderline being thrown out there, I think the jury easily was seeing her behavior on the stand and questioning if it was genuine or not. I can tell you a little story about a borderline that I used to work with. This was an individual who really just wanted to be seen as a victim. And at one point, the house was broken into. The police responded to the home, and she said, you know, my house was broken into. Can you please help me? I feel like I'm in danger. And after an investigation, the police said to her the strangest thing. The brick that broke the window came from inside the house. Now, Shannon also diagnosed Amber with histrionic personality disorder, which is different than borderline. And to me, I would say it's less dangerous, it's less manipulative. If you are in a relationship with somebody who's borderline, it's difficult. It's going to be very, very difficult. Histrionic, not so much. These are individuals who really like attention. Shocking. We're talking about actors right now. So they seek attention. They want praise, they want approval. The thing with histrionic is that they are often inappropriately sexual. They are seductive. They use flirtation and drama to bring you in. That is more of how they identify with themselves rather than that broken glass of the borderline. But with the histrionic person, their moods and their emotions are always shifting. You don't really know where they're going to be. It's very theatrical. It's very much like, well, how Amber heard was on the stand. At times she was sobbing, and at times she wasn't. And it didn't make sense with the content of what she was talking about. It seemed very performative. So you throw this diagnosis out there, and that's going to skew how the jury is going to look at her presentation. Now, we also, with histrionic, we see a lot of impressionistic speech. That is when. And this happened with Amber as well. At times she would be very meek and very babylike and please take care of me, and it wasn't my fault. But then at other times, she would get very aggressive and say, he abused me. How could you not believe it? So it's very important to look at the rapid shifts in Emotions, but also the rapid shifts in speech. Histrionic people will use their presentation to draw you in. And as you saw, Amber had full glam every time she entered that room. Her hair changed, her outfits were, like, on point. I mean, she looked gorgeous. She looked amazing. But she also used that for the jury to see and to side with her because she wanted to look more attractive. I don't know. What would it have been like had she looked like she had just come out of, like, a. A mud hole? Maybe that would have helped her. Who knows? Now, I should add that while Amber is looking like this hot mama on the stand, we have Johnny Depp with 85 rings on all of his fingers. And he's definitely styled, too, in his Johnny Depp pirate way. He's sitting there in the chair just looking so confident. At one point, she is crying, and he gets out. It's like mints or gum. And he asks the other lawyers if they'd like it, and the other lawyers smirk and take it while she's on the stand crying. So, I mean, that was very manipulative and coercive at the same time. We are looking at very, very muddied water. And although we have so much attention on Amber, we have to remember that there's a lot happening in that courtroom, and everybody is playing a part in how she is being perceived and how she feels comfortable telling her story, the emotions she's showing and who the jury is looking at, because that jury was staring at Johnny a lot while Amber was talking. So just to summarize, she had the diagnoses of borderline and histrionic personality, but there is a difference between the two. The borderline has this shattered glass identity. They don't really know who they are. They look for it in others. That's why a lot of borderlines date a lot of narcissistic men, because narcissistic men will offer an identity. But again, narcissistic men will bring you through that cycle of violence, and you're going to lose your identity at one point. And then that's why those relationships are so volatile. This is actually well studied now with the histrionic person, they are going to seek attention. It's not going to feel as malicious or dangerous as an individual with borderline personality disorder within a domestic violence relationship. So according to Dr. Shannon Curry, Amber Heard had unstable relationships. She had identity disturbance. She was emotionally labile, she was attention seeking, she was dramatic, and she was manipulative. Yes, all of those could be seen on the stand. Interestingly, all of those could be seen in Johnny Depp as well and in his past relationships and behaviors. But again, the focus was on Amber because of this, because of the testing. So Dr. Curry explained that these traits made Amber appear emotionally reactive, self centered and very prone to extreme behavior, especially in romantic relationships. So we're turning now, we're saying that the abuse that you saw, the broken glass bottle she claimed that Johnny Depp raped her with, now maybe we're taking that credibility away, maybe we're thinking it's a little more of her personality disorder. Describing this violent scene in which he lost the tip of his pinky, yet still continued to violently rape her with a shattered glass bottle. What's the truth? We still don't know. So we have to continue to look at the credibility. Dr. Curry really emphasized that these diagnoses are not uncommon in victims or survivors of domestic abuse. So again, just because she has these personality disorders, it doesn't mean she didn't go through all of this. We have to keep digging. So here's my forensic psychologist perspective reflecting on Dr. Curry's evaluation and all the testimony. And I watched every minute of this case. Dr. Curry's approach was consistent with gold standard forensic standards in America. The tests she used were widely accepted in court because they reveal conscious traits, but they also show unconscious behavioral patterns. We had a depth from Curry that we needed. We needed to see deep into Amber's mind, not just what she was showing people because she has the potential to manipulate so eloquently as those diagnoses state. She also included trauma based assessments which I use too, and I love. They assess these trauma related symptoms with precision. They act like a lie detection while looking for validity and consistency in Amber's statements. But she also did this with numerous tests. So Amber took several tests unrelated to each other and looked at. What Shannon looked at was the consistency and the validity in each of those individual tests and then compared all of them. Solid forensic work. I give her a gold star. Oops. Commercial time. There's nothing like sinking into luxury. At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Annabe sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price. And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom. Starting at only $699, the stain resistant performance fabric, slipcovers and cloud like frame duvet can go straight into your wash. Perfect for anyone with kids, pets or anyone who loves an easy to clean spotless sofa with a modular design and changeable. Style slipcovers. You can customize your sofa to fit any space and style. Whether you need a single chair loveseat or a luxuriously large sectional, Annabe has you covered. Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home. Right now you can shop up to 60% off store wide with a 30 day money back guarantee. Shop now@washablesofas.com Add a little to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. A foot washed up. A shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA using new scientific tools. They're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at othram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think in the New York Daily News. It's Teddy Escapes Blonde Drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you the story really became about ted's political future, Ted's political hopes. Will Ted become president? Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal. The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Pretty Private with ebony, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebony, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your Perceptions and give you new insight light on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all. Childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles and more. And found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on street corners. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect podcast network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Now, let's look at Dr. Dawn Hughes. Now, Don was hired by Amber's and she evaluated Amber. Now, I can't believe this number, but she evaluated Amber for 29 hours. I've never evaluated anyone that long. I think that's. That's pretty extreme. That's, to me, when you. You lose objectivity and you start to be a little too therapeutic in the room. Because if we're objectively looking for the answers that were listed out in that complaint, we don't need 29 hours to do it. Especially when you look at Dawn's psychological assessment. She didn't use a lot of lengthy tests. She used a lot of very, very brief screeners. So what the hell Was happening for 29 hours? Was dawn sitting there being manipulated by somebody with borderline personality disorder? Or was dawn really clearly investigating and seeing that Amber had post traumatic stress disorder? Now, one thing we need to know about dawn is that dawn testified in the Diddy trial. Now, she was one of the first witnesses, and she testified about domestic violence. I think she did a really good job, but it shows that she's very trauma and very treatment focused. Now, I think that case kind of sucked for her because the lawyers didn't know how to use her appropriately. She could have had way more bang for her buck. But she is an extremely good expert psychologist being brought into such high profile cases. And we need to keep that in mind as we review her psychological assessment of Amber. Where I think she fell flat in the Depp case is that she. She's kind of old school. She didn't really bring in newer psychological assessments. She didn't explain the science and how we measure truth in psychology. No matter what the test showed, Dr. Curry could easily explain away anything that Don said because he, Dr. Curry had so much science and objectivity from her testing battery. And I think that was very key. And it was well explained to the jury as well. It is always more trustworthy when you bring things to a jury that come from a scientific community. And, you know, maybe part of it is that Dr. Curry is younger, closer to school, where all this testing is shoved down our throats. Or maybe she just really brushed up on it and she uses it more in her career. But there was a notable difference in how these two approached this. Now, Dr. Dawn used a lot of screeners. And what I mean by screener is that you could be given a questionnaire of seven questions, nine questions, and it would say, you know, how shitty do you feel today? Click 1 through 5. There's no research behind that. We're just taking what you're saying at face value so you can lie. Now, what if we could compare that to other people? What if we had normative samples to compare that to, and we want to look at other people your age, your ethnicity, how much money you make with your similar job, your family, where you live in the world, the traumas you've been through. And what if we could analyze a comparison of every other person like you? Then we say, okay, that person is enduring a trauma. How does that person and that personality react to that trauma? Okay, let's do that 500,000 times. Let's run this analysis. It's called statistics, guys. We use it a lot in psychology. Let's run this analysis and have these massive normative samples. That's what Shannon Curry used that Don didn't. So when Dawn's using this screener, we're taking what Amber says for face value. When Shannon Curry is using these psychological assessments, she's taking millions of people and their information into her analysis. Dr. Dawn Hughes testified that she thought Amber Heard had post traumatic stress disorder. Very different to what Shannon Curry said. However, all of the elements that Dr. Don Hughes stated could also be seen by Shannon Curry. They were just named something different because they were symptoms of a bigger diagnosis. Now, Dr. Dawn thought it was only PTSD, not personality disorders. So she testified to multiple instances of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse at the hands of Johnny Depp. There's a lot of evidence that this occurred. A lot was also said by Amber. She emphasized coercive control, gaslighting, sexual violence, and the power imbalance in the relationship. Johnny Depp was a lot older than Amber. Amber was quite young when they got together. There is no question that there was a significant amount of coercion. But again, we did a deep dive in Shannon Curry's assessment into the mind of Amber Heard and what we saw. The leading factor wasn't traumatized. The leading factor was personality disorder. So in my forensic opinion, in my perspective, I think Dr. Hughes led with a trauma informed evaluation, and Dr. Curry came in unbiased with an overall openness to what Amber was presenting. So what's the take home message? Because this is complicated and this is messy, but this is a forensic trial. And I think the big message here is that it is extremely nuanced and we have to pay attention to the nuances. The human mind wants to just box everything up and lump it together. And I understand that, but that's why the professionals are involved in these cases, to break apart the nuances and try to explain this to the jury so that they can see this overall picture. One person can be telling the truth, they can be exaggerating, and they can be lying all at the same time. But this is a trial and things were laid out in the complaints. Specifically, there were things that we were looking for. So even though I'm sure Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were telling the truth, at times they were exaggerating, they were acting, they were also lying. We have to look at those nuances. We can't all be TikTok detectives. We have to lean on the professionals who actually have, you know, boots on the ground who have done these cases, and they really thoroughly understand this. So you might be asking, how did these two highly trained professional psychologists come to completely different conclusions? One came at it from a forensic lens, and one came at it from a trauma therapy lens. Now, what's a forensic lens? Well, it's psychology and the law. We're not just looking at a person. We're taking into account the legal situation that the person is in. We're taking into account the claims. We are heavily looking at malingering, which is lying, or feigning, which is exaggeration of symptoms. There is a different critical eye that comes into play when you talk about crime, criminal, civil, litigation. It's very different than when you open your office door and you bring somebody in for therapy and you just listen. You know, they're lying at times or they're not telling you the whole truth, but you listen because you offer them support. You want them to get to a better place in your life. I'm sorry, but as a forensic psychologist, that's not what we do at all. We want to rip apart the facts and we want to find the Truth. And so Shannon Curry came in guns fully loaded in this case. And I do not think that dawn did. And we see this further by the objective psychological instruments that Shannon Curry used And also that Dr. Dawn used, which were those screeners not anchored in objective science. It seems to me that Curry's goal was to assess the credibility of Amber Heard and the psychological functioning. Now, she was also probably looking very, very careful because she was hired by Johnny Depp's team. You can't undo the fact that when she was hired, she went to his house. Seems like they had some drinks and the legal team kind of assessed her. That did seem a bit biased. Now, I don't think she was biased meaningfully going into this, but there were elements of who's paying her that always plays into this. Right. Dr. Hughes seemed to really come in as somebody who wanted to explain Amber's trauma and abuse. But who is she explaining that to? She's explaining that to a bunch of lawyers and a jury and a judge. It's not going to sit the same way. So what was the result of all of this? How did it affect the trial? We had a courtroom showdown of clinical credibility. I've never seen a trial where psychologists have such an important role in the outcome, in what happens to these individuals lives. I'm going to give you an answer that you're not going to like. I don't think either party was entirely right or wrong. I think Amber Heard may have PTSD and personality traits or disorders. I think Johnny Depp probably has all of the above as well. But again, we didn't get an opportunity to dig into his mind. These things aren't mutually exclusive. But in a courtroom, complexity doesn't play well with juries. Simplicity wins. Dr. Curry was able to offer a diagnosis to the jury that was very clear and it was based on a narrative describing Amber Heard's behaviors. So even though the jury could look over at Johnny Depp and see his behaviors playing out in the courtroom, they had to focus on what they were given by the experts, by the witnesses, by the lawyers. At the end of the day, simplicity wins with a jury. Dr. Curry gave a diagnosis to the jury that was clear and based in behaviors they saw. Behaviors of Amber Heard that made sense to them. Based on what? What Dr. Curry was saying. Dr. Curry said that Amber Heard exaggerated, distorted and manipulated her abuse narrative. That won the case for Johnny Depp. Now there is a real danger of a diagnosis being in the public eye and on social media. Amber Heard's diagnosis of borderline personality disorder became a meme. It was a punchline, a character flaw. PTSD became a badge of dishonesty when attached to someone the public didn't trust. This damages our understanding of both diagnoses and the people involved. People with borderline personality are not inherently abusive. Survivors of trauma often act in ways that seem contradictory. Survivors of trauma don't always have borderline personality disorder abusers. Johnny Depp may be an abuser. Amber Heard may be an abuser. Both of these individuals can have all of these symptoms and all of these flaws as well. And when courts and media simplify mental illness into these hero villain categories, I think we all lose. We lose the humanity of what is going on. It's not justice. It just became theater. So in my closing arguments, I will tell you that psychological testimony is meant to clarify, not confuse, even though lawyers are going to try to get their fingers in there and confuse the shit out of it. If you're a good lawyer, you know how to use your witness and you also know how to cross and make sure that narrative is clear and precise and, and concise. But in this trial, it turned into a battleground for blame, credibility, public opinion. So as a forensic psychologist, I saw a lot of missed opportunities on both sides to explain the nuances of trauma, of personality, of memory, of domestic violence, of coercive control of relationships. Amber Heard may not have been a perfect victim, but real victims rarely are. And that's a reality we have to face if we ever want courts to do a better job. I actually think at the end of the day, we had two victims suing each other and we had two abusers suing each other, and we had a lot of lawyers riding their coattails. Intentionally Disturbing is a podcast from me, Dr. Leslie Lesley. It's distributed by iHeartMedia. Liam Billingham is the senior producer and he also edits the show. Katie Cobbs does the social media and also keeps me in my lane. The executive producers are Paul Anderson and Scott McCarthy for Workhouse Media. But I'm still the boss. Thanks again for listening. We'll see time you next next week with more Intentionally Disturbing. 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