Laurel Anderson

“Ms. Heard had a jackhammer style of talking. She was very amped up. He had trouble talking at a similar pace. Their dialogue, he was cut off a lot.”

Anderson's clinical characterization of the communication dynamic in sessions, establishing why Depp struggled to participate and felt overwhelmed.

“they engaged in what I saw as mutual abuse”

Anderson's direct characterization of the relationship as bidirectional, a central framing for Depp's team.

“It was a point of pride to her, if she felt disrespected, to initiate a fight.”

Heard's own self-reported motivation for initiating physical confrontations, as relayed by her treating therapist.

“she would strike him to keep him there. She would rather be in a fight than have him leave.”

Anderson relays Heard's self-reported tactic of striking Depp to prevent deescalation, tying the behavior to abandonment fear.

“she hits back and now she starts it and sometimes hits him first because her history is having been violated by her father physically”

Anderson recounts Heard's own explanation, given in an individual session, for why she initiates physical violence against Depp — framing it as pride and trauma response rather than self-defense.

“she slapped him because he was being incoherent and talking about another -- being with another woman”

Anderson confirms Heard admitted to initiating the December 2015 slap — not in response to being struck — while Depp was incapacitated following his mother's hospitalization.

“She loved him. He loved her. She believed that - she wasn't stupid. She knew that what they were doing wasn't healthy, and so she wanted to want to divorce him, but she didn't.”

Anderson characterizes Heard's emotional state in late 2015: aware the relationship was destructive but unwilling to leave, lending context to the strategic calculations that follow in the same session.

“This was her talking out loud, trying to strategize for herself.”

Anderson identifies the police-report-advantage notation as Heard's own strategic thinking, not a clinical recommendation — directly relevant to the defense's characterization of Heard's motivations.

“That's what I recall. They may have been in other places throughout her body; I don't remember. But I do remember her face.”

Anderson affirms her recollection of bruising specifically on Heard's face, anchoring her earlier testimony.

“What I said previously, and I'll say it again: He's kind of doing a retrospective of trying to understand the relationship and is characterizing it as chaotic and violent, that she gave as good as she got and she started it.”

Anderson contextualizes Depp's own words from therapy as a retrospective self-assessment, not a contemporaneous account.

“she.initiated fights. She started violence. She rose to the challenge if he started first, which I - and so she - in my opinion, that had been established throughout the relationship, that she fought as hard as he did, and he tried to deescalate far more than I think she did”

Anderson's clearest articulation of her mutual-abuse assessment, directly tying Heard's conduct to the 'gave as good as she got' characterization.

“No. Because I would have written it when he first mentioned it to me.”

Anderson explains her confidence that the finger injury was not discussed before June 18, 2016, grounding the timeline in her note-taking practice.

“That's true.”

Concedes the one-sided nature of the disclosures in those solo sessions.