According to the former couple’s ex-marriage counsellor, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard allegedly ‘engaged in mutual abuse.’

According to Variety, Dr. Laurel Anderson testified about the couple’s abusive relationship history in a defamation action filed by Depp against Heard for a 2018 op-ed about’surviving domestic abuse’ that was filmed earlier on February 21 and shown in court on Thursday.

Dr. Anderson outlined the marriage counselling she offered the couple in 2015 in her deposition.

“Yes, you’re correct,” Anderson said when asked if Depp mistreated Heard. I believe he had been well managed for about, I don’t know, 20, 30 years.”

“Both were victims of domestic abuse, but I felt he had been well managed for decades,” she said. Then he was provoked by Ms. Heard, and they engaged in what I perceived as reciprocal abuse.”

Heard “occasionally provoked the confrontations in order to keep him with her since desertion was her biggest dread,” Anderson added.

“If [Depp] were about to leave her to deescalate the conflict, she would strike him to keep him there because she would rather be in a fight than have him go,” the counsellor recalled Heard telling her.

Since their breakup in 2016, Depp and Heard have been entangled in a slew of court battles. The couple met on the set of the 2011 film The Rum Diary and divorced in 2016.