Amid Amber Heard and Johnny Depp's legal battle, the actress' friend, iO Tillett Wright, has penned a powerful letter about the night she called 911 seemingly to protect Heard.
Wright is named in Heard's sworn declaration, in which the actress claims that on the night of May 21, Depp "demanded we call our friend iO Tillett Wright to prove his paranoid and irrational accusations about some delusional idea he was having."
According to Heard's account, immediately after Wright urged her to get out of the house, the actor ripped the phone from her hand, wound his arm "like a baseball pitcher and threw the cell phone" at her her cheek.
The letter Wright published on Refinery 29 on Wednesday doesn't include any names, but the events described coincide with Heard's account of the altercation between herself and Depp on May 21.
Wright's letter offers her perspective.
"I called 911 because she never would," she wrote. "Because every time it happened, her first thought was about protecting him. Because every time it happened, the sweet, loving man we all cared for so much would come back with apologies, profuse, swearing up and down that he understood how bad what he had done was, and swearing never to do it again."
Wright continued, adding that the abuse had been going on since December. The photographer was even witness to the terrifying after effects of an assault that left her friend with a pillow covered in blood.
"I know this because I went to their house. I saw the pillow with my own eyes. I saw the busted lip and the clumps of hair on the floor," she wrote. "I got the phone call immediately after it happened, her screaming and crying, a stoic woman reduced to sobs."
"I understood her heartbreak. He had been my friend, too, a person I loved very much. A person I had once referred to as a brother," she continued, later adding, "I didn’t want to believe it either, until I saw the wreckage."
Wright went on to describe other instances of abuse, writing that she witnessed her friend trying to protect her aggressor while accepting that what was happening was wrong.
"I listened as she cycled through things she could've possibly done to provoke him, or how she could've made him upset enough to do this," she wrote.
She added, "It doesn't matter what was said between the two lovers, it doesn't matter if the romance was coming to an end, because nothing warrants that response. No person, ever, should suffer violence at the hands of the person they love."
Wright then described the night of the phone call, saying she heard the man (presumably Depp) say, "What if I pulled your hair back?" and then heard her friend scream for help.
"I wondered like so many times before if I should break the code of silence that surrounds celebrities and invite the police into the situation," she wrote, "and in a split second decided that, yes, I was going to. Because I realized that as long as I was protecting the abuser from consequences, I was enabling the abuse and I could no longer partake. I had to stand up for my friend, and for what I believe in my gut to be the code of conduct by which human beings have to behave with each other."
Heard filed for divorce from Depp, citing irreconcilable differences, in May. The 30-year-old actress was recently granted a temporary restraining order from her estranged husband after she accused him of domestic abuse late last month.
The accounts described by Wright supposedly took place two days before Heard filed for divorce.
“During the entirety of our relationship, Johnny Depp has been verbally and physically abusive to me,” Heard stated in a sworn declaration. “He has a short fuse. He is often paranoid and his temper is exceptionally scary for me.”
The actress also provided photographic evidence to support her allegations.
Heard and Depp are expected to appear in court for another hearing on June 17, at which time Heard’s restraining order against him will expire.
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