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Amber Heard’s Pledged Donations – Did The ACLU & LA Children’s Hospital Get Duped? – Stefanie Stark

Amber Heard's Pledged Donations

Amber Heard’s Pledged Donations – Did The ACLU & LA Children’s Hospital Get Duped is Stefanie Stark’s take on recent high-profile events in Hollywood. Stefanie is the President of Development Systems International and oversees major gift fundraising campaigns for charities across the U.S. and around the world.

Unless you were living under a rock this summer, or you were so engrossed in your own nonprofit’s management that you weren’t paying attention, you probably heard the nonstop news coverage about the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard defamation trial. Ultimately, the jury found that Amber Heard had defamed Johnny Depp when she published an op-ed in the Washington Post in 2018. The jury awarded Johnny Depp more than $10 million in damages. Ms. Heard was also awarded $2 million in her countersuit against Johnny Depp for statements Depp’s lawyer made. But there were revelations during the trial that led to a national conversation about charitable giving.

In one of the most heated moments of the trial, Johnny Depp’s attorney, Camille Vasquez, during cross examination, questioned Amber Heard about her public claim in a 2018 Dutch television interview where she confirmed she had donated $3.5 million of her $7 million divorce settlement to the ACLU and the other half, $3.5 million, to Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. In an attempt to expose a lie made publicly by Amber Heard, Johnny Depp’s attorney famously asked, “Sitting here today, Ms. Heard, you still haven’t donated the $7 million divorce settlement – donated, not pledged, donated – to charity, isn’t that right?”

Amber Heard’s Pledged Donations – Did The ACLU & LA Children’s Hospital Get Duped? – Stefanie Stark

Next came Amber Heard’s now infamous response, a defiant response which elicited a pearl-clutching collective gasp of horror from every development officer working in the charitable sector. Ms. Heard replied, “I use pledge and donate synonymous with one another.”

While trial viewers mostly piled on Amber Heard for making such an egregious statement about a pledge being equal to a donation, social media went wild with hilarious pledged vs donated memes of epic mockery. And in nonprofit offices across the country, nonprofit executives gathered around the proverbial water cooler to shake their heads and bemoan this nightmarish donor type, one who pledges a large gift and then “ghosts” the charity without donating the entire gift. But it must be said that the ACLU and Children’s Hospital LA are partly to blame for this lapsed donor. Partly.

For anyone unclear about the difference between a charitable pledge and a donation (ahem, Amber Heard), let’s first define how the two words are not synonymous with one another. A pledge is defined simply as “a solemn promise or undertaking.” A pledged donation is a donor’s promise to give a gift over a set time period – whether that is a monthly gift, a quarterly gift, or a multi-year annual donation. Charitable organizations usually solicit pledges for multi-year major gift campaigns.

The Dictionary defines donation as “something that is given to a charity, especially a sum of money.” Donation refers to the immediate exchange of money from a donor. To contrast the two terms, while a pledge is a promise to give, a donation is a gift that is given.

ABC News broke the story in June 2022 about a juror who spoke publicly after the trial about why the jury did not believe Amber Heard. According to the juror, the discovery that Amber Heard had not fulfilled her charitable pledges to the ACLU and Childrens Hospital L.A. led to a serious credibility issue for the actress. Among other statements, the juror said that Ms. Heard’s revelation that she had not donated her $7 Million divorce settlement to charity was “a fiasco for her” in the jury’s assessment.

“She goes on a talk show in the UK. The video shows her sitting there telling the host she gave all that money away. And the terms she used in that video clip were, ‘I gave it away, I donated it, it’s gone.’ The fact is she didn’t give much of it away at all.”Anonymous Juror

Testimony from an attorney with the ACLU, Terence Dougherty, revealed that Amber Heard, with help from Johnny Depp and Elon Musk, had donated $1.2 million of the $3.5 million that was pledged to the charity, and no further installments had been received since 2019. An executive from Children’s Hospital L.A., Candie Davidson-Goldbronn, testified that the $3.5 million donation pledged by Amber Heard to CHLA was unfulfilled. Since 2016, the hospital, she testified, had only received $250,000 of the total multi-million dollar pledge.

When you put aside the disturbing testimony from both sides about domestic abuse, violence, substance abuse, and defecation in the marital bed, there was shocking testimony from the executives at both the ACLU and the Children’s Hospital L.A. that should serve as a significant warning and a lesson to all nonprofit executives about donor attrition and how to avoid it. Let’s look at how these charities got it wrong.

Donor attrition is a concern for every nonprofit organization. The average donor attrition rate reported varies among the professional nonprofit associations, from 10% to as high as 40%. It costs charities more money to acquire new donors than it does to retain existing donors. Donor attrition rate is the rate at which your donors do not renew or fulfill their pledged gifts. But rather than look at the number as an overall percentage, as organizations like the AFP would have you do, what we should be looking at is the individual plans of care for each of our donors and how we are attending to their needs to participate in something larger than themselves in order to reduce donor attrition. After all, donors are not numbers on a graph, they are people who desire to do good.

Often lapsed donors are those who have been treated by the organization as an ATM machine, without any real personal engagement such as regular phone calls, in-person meetings over coffee or lunch, and invitations to engage directly with the organization outside of fundraising events. If your relationship with the donor is very shallow, such as impersonal emails, newsletters, and snail-mail letters that remind them it’s time to pay their pledged donation, then your donors may move on to support another organization where they feel more engaged, aligned, and properly thanked. Simply put, donors want to feel the love.

Let’s take a look at how Children’s Hospital Los Angeles may have been guilty, in this case, of not properly engaging the donor, Amber Heard, who had pledged a multi-million dollar gift. In May 2022, Candie Davidson-Goldbronn testified that, after Amber Heard pledged $3.5 million to the hospital, a gift of $250,000 was received from Ms. Heard via a Fidelity Donor-Advised Fund. Next, Ms. Davidson-Goldbronn was shown a letter from 2018 and asked about the document. She said it was a letter from her to Mr. White, Amber Heard’s representative, “inquiring about further installments on the pledge that had not been fulfilled.” The CHLA representative was then asked why she wrote the letter to Mr. White. She responded, “I was trying to figure out if there were any other payments coming from Mr. White to fulfill the pledge because Children’s Hospital had not received any other correspondence from him.” From the outset, this letter sounded very institutional and transactional.

Another document was shown during the deposition to Candie Davidson-Goldbronn by the attorney. She was asked, “What is this document?” And she replied, “It is a letter to Ms. Gottlieb from myself on behalf of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles inquiring about additional gift installments.” The attorney acknowledged that the letter was addressed to Ms. Amber Heard, care of Ms. Jody Gottlieb. In CHLA records, Ms. Gottlieb was the contact listed for Amber Heard. When asked why she sent the letter, Davidson-Goldbronn replied, “I was trying to see if the pledge was going to be fulfilled or not.” CHLA did not receive any response to the letter of inquiry. A question that was not asked or answered was, “Did you pick up the phone and call Amber?”

Amber Heard may be a heartless villain for failing to fulfill her promise to Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, and perhaps she never intended to, but the case could also be made that the organization failed in their responsibility to properly engage and thank their major gift donor when the CHLA appears to have made no effort outside of impersonal letters to properly show gratitude and cultivate a donor relationship that would have resulted in gift pledge fulfillment and a happy donor.

Most shocking was the revelation by CHLA representative, Candie Davidson-Goldbronn, during cross examination, when she was asked by Amber Heard’s attorney, Elaine Bredehoft, “What is your understanding of the length of time over which Ms. Heard pledged the gift of $3.5 million to Children’s Hospital?” Davidson-Goldbronn’s jaw-dropping response was, “There was no date arrangement with Ms. Heard to have this pledge paid off in a particular time.” This confession is evidence of a striking failure on the part of CHLA that could easily have been avoided with a properly signed gift proposal letter that detailed the timeframe in which the donor intended the payments to be scheduled.

A small percentage of donors, less than 10%, are unable to fulfill their pledged donations due to a catastrophic, unexpected event that happens in their lives – job loss, death, or a myriad of other unforeseen circumstances that make fulfilling the donation impossible. In the case of Amber Heard, ACLU executive, Terence Doughterty, testified that the ACLU had received $1.3 million of the $3.5 million that was pledged. He testified that the ACLU was told by Ms. Heard that she could not complete the pledged donation due to the “financial difficulties” she was facing, primarily the legal costs she had incurred following her ex-husband’s lawsuit. In the trial, however, it was revealed that Ms. Heard had the $7 million divorce settlement for a full 13 months prior to being served with a lawsuit.

The ACLU appears to have been duped by Amber Heard. In their excitement over the pledged $3.5 million gift, the organization acted on behalf of their donor when they pitched the idea of Amber Heard’s op-ed to the Washington Post, the one where she represented herself as a public figure representing domestic and sexual violence. The ACLU helped co-write (or ghost-write) and edit the article for which she now has been successfully sued for defamation by Johnny Depp. The organization went even further when they named Amber Heard an ACLU Ambassador on women’s rights and gender-based violence after her promised payment, though the organization has gone on record saying they would never solicit donations in exchange for ambassadorships. It appears now, due to these revelations in the public trial, that the ACLU will suffer financially because of their relationship with Amber Heard – not only in the unfulfilled pledge from her, but also in the loss of continued financial support from ACLU members due to the bad publicity.

A clip from the post trial interview with Savannah Guthrie for Dateline revealed that Amber Heard may have used the charitable pledges for positive publicity to show that she wasn’t a “gold digger.” Savannah Guthrie said in the interview, “You had promised to donate the $7 million of your divorce settlement to charity. It was revealed at the trial that you haven’t done so yet, however, they played a tape where you state on air that you have donated it. You say donated, you know that everybody thinks you’d donated – not that you’ve pledged it.”

Amber Heard responded to Guthrie, “This is another one of those examples, if you pull back and think about it, I shouldn’t have had to have donated it in an attempt to be believed. I shouldn’t have had to earmark the entirety of it in order to…”

Savannah Guthrie interjected, “You shouldn’t have, but once you said you did…”

To which Amber Heard replied, “Right, and that was where it was intended to go.”

The reality is that less than 10% of donors will be an “Amber Heard type” who may use your charity to self-promote with no intention of ever fulfilling their pledged gifts, all the while confusing the terms pledged and donated as synonymous with one another, and ghosting the nonprofit when it’s time for the next installment. But charities can and should guard against donor attrition. Setting a slightly higher fundraising goal that accounts for a small percentage of donor attrition is a failsafe. More importantly, following up on pledged gifts by engaging major donors in meaningful ways with individual plans of care, in-person interactions, calls, and significant gestures of gratitude in between scheduled pledged gifts or fundraising events, nonprofit organizations not only ensure pledged gifts are fulfilled but that their donors become their greatest champions. Donors want to feel the love.

Simply put, Amber Heard’s Pledged Donations never existed. In truth, Amber Heard’s Pledged Donations were a brazen yet failed attempt at self promotion.

Amber Heard's Pledged Donations - Did The ACLU & LA Children's Hospital Get Duped? - Stefanie StarkStefanie Stark is President of Development Systems International. She spends her life raising millions of dollars for charities across the U.S. and around the world.
800-257-6670
[email protected]

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60 Comments

  1. […] Amber Heard’s Pledged Donations – Did The ACLU & LA Children’s Hospital Get Duped is Stefa… […]

  2. Kaylie says:

    This really was an unnecessary stab at Amber Heard. She has donated more than what most people have in a lifetime and if not for her famous ex husband dragging her through court she would have no doubt fulfilled her pledged donation. You are no doubt more concerned with dragging her name in the mud along with the rest of his flying monkeys than anything. Try gratitude and respect would be my advice when dealing with donors.

    • Thowa says:

      Imagine reading about Amber Turd stealing money from the sick and dying children and still managed of saying things like these.

      You turdstains really are absolutely vile human beings.

      • Vicky says:

        She didn’t run out of money due to being sued by Depp. Her insurance paid for all of her fees . She had the money from the divorce for 13 months before she was sued. It’s just not factually correct that she had to pay her own libel fees/lawyers. The 2 insurance companies went to court themselves as they were in dispute who should pay. One of them sued Heard aswell as she was found to of lied with actual malice. She’s a liar on many many accounts

      • Debra A Rutledge says:

        Exactly!

    • Larissa says:

      Amber had the 7million for more than one year before the trial. . Why didn’t she donate it? As she pledged? And she did donate 1.3 million ..but it was actually Mr.Depp who donated it. Under both their names. It came from him.

      I think this is a very fair statement on the fiasco that was Amber knowing people would think she fully donated when she didn’t. She knew. And that’s what’s gross .

      Not that she can’t afford to, or that she has given something before. It’s that she knew how it came across, and used it to her advantage. Gross.

      • Susan Johnson says:

        This is most certainly a dangerous precedent, to use “vowels and consonants” ie, unfulfilled promises, to self promote, and politically maneuver, especially when committing defamation against an innocent man. I’m afraid it is happening frequently these days. #JusticeForJohnnyDepp

    • Sabella says:

      What an absolutely horrifying response to Amber Heard NOT fulfilling her donation promises. There was no reason whatsoever for her to not pay these charities the full amount, and in fact she lied and claimed she HAD donated the entire $7M for several years until she was FORCED to acknowledge the truth – that she kept every penny. The only money donated to either charity came from either Johnny Depp or Elon Musk – truly ironic for a woman who claims to be strong and financially independent.

      How dare you try to turn the tables, to blame the charities and the author of this article for Amber Heard’s staggeringly selfish and cruel fraud?

      She stole $7 MILLION dollars that was supposed to help abused women and children hospitalized with cancer. Will we ever know how many women were stranded in abusive relationships, or how many children suffered, perhaps even died because the money she promised never came?

      To continue to support this woman after everything that has been proven about her is disgusting.

    • Sheryl Liddle says:

      Absolute rubbish. She had the 7 million for 13mths before Johnny sued her. She paid nothing of the settlement to charity catch the trial. Johnny’s team paid the first installments of her divorce settlement yo both the charities and your queen kicked up merry he’ll about it cthe other money came from Elon Musk. Perhaps you wouldn’t be so concerned for a lying abusive hoaxer if you watched the trial evidence. Not to mention She lied stating she donated it all. She wanted nothing vyeah right!

    • Melanie says:

      She had her $7million settlement for over a year before she was sued. She refused to sign an installment agreement. We also know now that her lawyers & legal expenses were paid by her insurance. Not by her.

      She said on Dateline she didn’t understand why she should have to PAY her pledges ‘in order to be believed’. In other words: It was a PR stunt to sway public opinion. She never intended to pay. Even worse, she used her ACLU ‘Ambassador’ status to earn $30k per speech as a ‘public figure representing domestic abuse’ – and we know now that was a hoax.

      If this article was a ‘stab’ it was well earned.

    • Tracy says:

      She didn’t pay ANY legal fees ir costs! Her insurance company paid all of that and paid the settlement! The donations made were on her behalf by Johnny and Elon! She has not herself paid one red cent! Try again!

    • Julia says:

      Why does the point completely miss you?Her charitable acts before are not in question here. Moreover, 1.2 did not come from her directly or the money she received. Litigation came 13 months after. Her insurance companies were paying the legal fees throughout the trial. The number of lies that Amber roped up is truly disappointing. The fact that you would try to make excuses for her despicable lies says a lot about you. As the writer said, the other allegations are besides the point. But for this one on donations she exposed her character for all to see. It was not hearsay. All videos , depositions and testimonies were from her own mouth. So don’t look for a villain in the Stark just to make yourself feel better about something.

    • Cassie says:

      Don’t lie. She didn’t sign anything because she wasn’t going to donate

    • You says:

      She had the money to donate, not pledge a full 18 months before she was sued. If she wanted nothing then she should have immediately given the money away like she said she did and not lie about it. Because what it boils down to is she lied and nothing will change that unless she finally decides to tell the truth and the whole truth. You know like you pledge to when you put your had on the bible before you testify. Come on now, be truthful

  3. denise says:

    What an absolute disgrace of an article. Shamefully dismissive and derisive of a woman (and survivor) who donated hundreds of thousands more than her abusive pig of an ex husband, who sued her and was the entire reason she was unable to fulfil her pledge (which she intends to still fulfil). You should be so ashamed t speak of large donors like this. I wouldn’t give this author the steam off my morning piss if I knew she was writing this gossipy filth online.

    • Moontje says:

      She is no suvivor a proven liar and abuser !!

      • JodieMM says:

        She is not a survivor because she was never a victim. She was a physical, psychological and emotional abuser. A proper court with a jury decided she defamed him, with malice. She had no intention of donating to both charities. She stated she did for clout, attention and to distract from the public perception that she was a gold digger.

    • Olga says:

      She’s not a survivor. She lied in court and on TV saying she was donating. The sick children still haven’t received the money, even though she hasn’t spent a dime on the trial, yet she lives in Spain in her own house and spends money on PR and paparazzi.

    • Debra A Rutledge says:

      You mean ABUSER! and drug addict/drunk.

    • Melanie says:

      Her legal expenses were paid by her insurance, not by her. She had her $7 million divorce settlement for over a year before she was sued. The court found that she perpetrated a hoax about being abused. Lastly, she admitted on Dateline she didn’t understand why she was expected to PAY her pledges “in order to be believed”. It was a PR stunt all along. She had never intended to pay.

    • L says:

      Heard is not a survivor..she was the abuser and Depp was not the first one…Her insurence paid for the trial in VA and the Sun paid for the trial in U.K…so she could have paid the money….but she did’t!

    • Cheryl says:

      You need to reread the article and watch the testimony from the trial again. She had the entirety of the 7 million dollars for over a year (13 months to be exact) before being sued and she didn’t donate any of it. what had been donated was donated in her name by her ex husband Johnny Depp (which she filed court docts to prevent him from making further donations in her name as she was afraid he would get tax credit from it and it would come out of her divorce settlement amount, she said she wanted to send the money to the charities directly ) and from Elon Musk. NOT any of it came from herself. Also the trial proved that every single account of abuse that she said happened did not in fact happen, while she did in fact abuse Johnny. She lied just like she lied about donating the money to the charities.

    • Tracy says:

      Do you know how to read? This article was about charities! It had nothing to do with survivors or victims! Amber personally didn’t donate a single dime! Johnny Depp and Elon Musk made donations in her name. The lawsuit has nothing to do with her ability to pay her pledge! The lawsuit was funded and paid for by insurance, not Amber; so that excuse doesn’t fly either! She pocketed the 7 million and spent it on herself without EVER intending to donate any of her divorce settlement! Amber Heard has done nothing for ACTUAL survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault! She lied! That’s been proven over and over again! People like you are why this is still an issue! You have to admit when you’re wrong and atone for that instead of spreading false information and trying to ignore the truth!

      This was a very informative article about charities and why the follow up is so important! For most people it would make a difference. For the ones like Amber, who never really intended to donate anything, it wouldn’t make a difference! She just thought no one would check and she’d get away with the lie!

    • Nareh says:

      What is shameful was how she wanted to oresent herserlf as charitable but uses orher people, aka Depp and Musk, to use their own money and pay out of their pocket for her to get the publicity. The $500,000 and $350,000 paid to the ACLU were from Elon Musk, those donations were not given from Heards settlement money.

    • Cassie says:

      She isn’t a survivor. She didn’t want to donate and signed nothing. Stop believing in an abusive woman

  4. Marcy says:

    I think it’s appalling that you’re using a domestic abuse survivors hardship in the same sentence with “hilarious” and “epic meme mockery.” I’m a survivor and I work in donor relations. Every organization I’ve worked with would be overjoyed to receive 1.3M* (not $1.2) or a quarter million from a donor. Every organization recognizes financial hardship as a legitimate reason to pause or discontinue a pledge. Amber Heard was sued for $50 million in March 2019. She had to retain council for 2 defamation trials that wore on from 2018 to 2022. Anyone would advise her to stop payments.
    Amber didn’t dupe anybody. She only received the full $7M divorce settlement in October 2018. Her pledge to Children’s Hospital may have had a clause to begin instalments once she received the full settlement. Depp went ahead and donated $100K of Amber’s settlement money to each charity so he could get the tax break on her charitable donation. That $100K plus $250K is the first $350K instalment for the Children’s Hospital pledge fulfilled. She made payments to the ACLU in 2016 (Depp’s tax break $100K, her $350K), 2017 ($500K) & 2018 ($350K) likely because she had a closer relationship with them. If Depp hadn’t engaged in 4 years of post separation litigation abuse, today the ACLU would have $2.7M and the Children’s Hospital would have $1.75M from Amber. Who’s the real villain?

    • Wyno Forever says:

      A. She was proven NOT to have been abused.
      B. She was caught on tape abusing her husband and admitting too said abuse.
      C. SHE WAS ARRESTED FOR PRIOR DOMESTIC ABUSE!

      And MOST PERTINENT TO YOUR COMMENT. SHE NEVER DONATED $1. Johnny Depp made the donations directly until he was asked to STOP. Guess who asked him to stop donating and instead wanted money sent to her? WAIT FOR It… Amber Heard. AND SHE KEPT IT! And guess who donated the rest of the 1.2 MIL? Elon Musk. SHE ADMITTED IN COURT THAT those payments made by Johnny and Elon would not be considered as part of the 7 Million. So now what’s your next spin?

    • Mina says:

      You deliberately ignore the fact that Amber Heard’s legal fees were paid by insurance companies. She never intended to donate a single cent to any charity. She intended to keep every bit of the $7 million she received from Johnny Depp, whom she used and abused. I have no doubt she has spent it all on expensive purchases and vacations. She is a spoiled, selfish, narcissistic brat who thinks she is a superstar. It wasn’t just Johnny she abused. She abused Lily-Rose and Jack Depp too. I thank God Lily-Rose became close friends with Kristen Stewart while her former stepmother was treating her father like trash. It helped her to avoid her toxicity. She and Jack want nothing to do with her. Kristen told her off when she allegedy contacted her in a plea for sympathy. She knows Amber is trash, as does everyone who has associated with her. She is done in entertainment forever. It is all her fault.

    • Sabella says:

      This is nothing but disproven lies and false propaganda. I’m shocked that a survivor would support a proven abuser and a fraud who stole millions from charities that were trusting her to keep her promises.

    • Debra A Rutledge says:

      Iam a REAL ABUSE SURVIVER, Mrs. Heard is NO domestic abuse survivor, she is in fact a ABUSER!

    • Pam says:

      She received her final payment in February of 2018, not October. The law suit was filed in March of 2019. She had plenty of time to pay. The Sun covered her lawyer expenses for the UK trial and insurance covered the Virginia trial. Any out of pocket expenses she had were of her own choice. Per NYM insurance, those expenses were around 200K.

    • Chris says:

      That’s incorrect, the sun newspaper paid the fees at UK trial, she was a witness & had no legal fees. The 2nd trial was paid for by her insurance company. She had the money for over 12 months before the 2nd trial. Earned an estimated 20 million from Aquaman franchise. What hardship did she face. An abuser & liar that faked injuries, staged photos & attempted to hoodwink the public into thinking she was a victim.
      She didn’t want Johnny Depp to pay the charity simply because she wanted to keep the money. If she truly wanted to help those charities she would have paid them & not lied about it. She lied under oath in the UK saying she had donated it in its entirerity, so much the judge believed it was “hardly the actions of a gold diggar to donate the entire settlement”. She knew she hadn’t paid it & the public know.

    • Tracy says:

      You’ve completely misrepresented the facts and 90% of your comments are untrue! She paid nothing relating to the litigation! Not a dime! That was paid entirely by insurance companies! She paid not a single dime to the charities! Those were donations make in her name, not from her! Next excuse?

    • Julia says:

      Why does the point completely miss you?Her charitable acts before are not in question here. Moreover, 1.2 did not come from her directly or the money she received. Litigation came 13 months after. Her insurance companies were paying the legal fees throughout the trial. The number of lies that Amber roped up is truly disappointing. The fact that you would try to make excuses for her despicable lies says a lot about you. As the writer said, the other allegations are besides the point. But for this one on donations she exposed her character for all to see. It was not hearsay. All videos , depositions and testimonies were from her own mouth. So don’t look for a villain in the Stark just to make yourself feel better about something. You should be mad at her for making a mockery of abuse

    • Nareh says:

      Your are incorrect. Heard received the full settlement in February 2018 not October 2018. Secondly, $500,000 to UCLA was paid by Elon Musk and later, $350,000 was also paid to the UCLA by Elon Musk. That money did not come from Heards divorce settlement.

    • Cassie says:

      She had the money for 13 months before she was sued. She lied. She signed nothing because she didn’t want to donate. She isn’t a survivor and never will be. It was Johnny and elongate who donated money. You do know that she defamed Johnny right?! Which means he never abused her. Ever!

    • Dory says:

      Your comment is a classic example of gaslighting. The facts are that Depp started to give the $7m to the charities (before any lawsuits) and she didn’t allowed it. Then she went public to say she donated the money not pledged.
      It’s very clear and simple. Amber Heard lied, period.

    • Joann Hess says:

      Who’s the real villain?

      Amber Heard.

      No matter how you try and twist the truth. She’s an abusive liar who never intended to donate any of that money. She kept every cent. The only payments made were by Depp and Musk. It’s sickening that people still make excuses for her.

  5. Nige Silvestri says:

    Pledge and donate are synonymous. Look it up in a dictionary or thesaurus. Most organisations would have been glad to get the money they did.

    • Olga says:

      They’re not synonyms. They’re different things. She said in court that she donated the money. On TV, she said she donated.

    • Lea says:

      A pledge is a promise, a donation is an act. It is quite different. The issue is not the amount of money (which did not come from AH) that the organizations received, it is the fact that AH used these “pledges” to make herself look altruistic in the public eye without ever intending to fulfill them. Her legal fees were mostly covered through 2 insurance policies and she had her entire divorce settlement for over a year before the VA case was lodged.

    • Cassie says:

      Nige shut up. They are not synonymous. She signed nothing because she didn’t want to donate.

    • Joann Hess says:

      The article literally points out exactly how they are NOT synonymous. Did you even bother to read it?

  6. Tru Fax says:

    “She has donated more than what most people have in a lifetime”

    What money has she donated though?
    As far as the ACLU and CHLA:
    The first installment of her divorce settlement was initiated by JD’s lawyers.
    The next installment was donated by Ellon Musk, which she claims was not part of her pledge.

    She received her entire divorce settlement over a year before being sued and did not donate a single penny.
    So unless there are some other charities she donated to, I’m not sure how that can be true.

    If you average a salary of 50k for 35 years, that’s 1.75M dollars. You’re telling us she has donated more than 1.75M dollars?

  7. It was EXTREMELY necessary you callous individual. These organisations RELY on donations to even HELP people! Amber put out the message that all you need to do is pledge and its the SAME as making a donation and Camille HAD to scrutinise to simply put the record straight WHICH she continued to perpetuate he SAME harmful message! This was necessary and the fact all you care about is Amber not the charities affected says a lot!

  8. Anita says:

    This article was written in a manner that comes across as extremely unprofessional, which consequently makes the public question this organisation as a whole. Do better.

  9. Soma says:

    Good article but you missed one particular point which I think is important. Amber Heard’s entire (reportedly $10million) legal representation and $1million settlement to JD for defamation was paid by Travelers insurance. It was Amber’s “excuse” she couldn’t donate because of litigation. But the insurance company was paying nearly every bill.

    Also the ACLU tried to intercept and intervene in this case on behalf of Amber. While the Washington Post updated the op-ed with a disclaimer that amber heard was sued for defamation and lost, the ACLU website continues to uphold her with utter zeal. Even going so far as to rewrite history about their ambassadorship program and their authorship of the OP ED. https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/what-you-need-to-know-about-aclu-ambassadors-including-amber-heard

    Based on those court documents, I’m guessing that Amber not only lied about donating to these charities, but also lied about why she wouldnt/couldnt donate.

    Amber had two insurance policies and the insurance companies tried to sue each other to figure out who was going to pay her bill, too. Although it looks like they settled out of court in September. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60070794/travelers-commercial-insurance-company-v-new-york-marine-and-general/

    What I don’t understand is how the ACLU, a group of lawyers, wrote something so defamatory. How do seasoned attorneys pick a side without seeing a SHRED of evidence before publishing? I understand they made a mistake, but to double down on it? To not end their “pay money for ambassadorship” program? To not even admit a mistake? Whats going on at the ACLU? It is these kinds of “cover-up and deny” movements that have made me never donate to the ACLU again. I guess they are happy with the Elon Musk money. Good luck to them.

  10. Lissa B says:

    Interesting article giving great insight. Amber Heard used these two organisations to make herself look like an angel. She never had any intention of donating her ‘pledges’! Anyone who believed, or worse, still believes she would, need a serious reality check. It pains me that there are still silly, naive people out there that think she’s in any way trustworthy or believable.

  11. Vera cati says:

    To anyone who believes Amber failed to fulfill her pledges because she was sued, can you explain why she did not contact/reply to ACLU & chla to say why they had not received the money. It is very inconsiderate not to inform the charity that pledges would not be fullfilled soon so they could budget plan.

  12. Dale Free says:

    Until more details about what actually happened with the pledges came out in the trial, I didn’t really think it was a big deal. It was just semantics in my view. It’s not unusual to pay large pledges in installments over time for tax purposes. But where she got exposed was the information that she had the entire $7 million settlement for over a year before she got sued and had not been making the pledged payments. Almost all of the money that was received by the ACLU and CHLA was paid by Depp and Elon Musk. Her excuse that being sued kept her from paying doesn’t hold water because we’re now all aware that insurance paid her legal fees. Meanwhile, she has skipped off to live in Spain, leaving those pledges in her dust. Shame on her.

  13. Angela C Deppe says:

    I would love to know if this was laziness on the part of the charity administration, or did they have some prior knowledge that this was a donate for clout pledge and not worth the grooming effort.

    I will reiterate here, and vent that it galls me every time her excuse of legal fees is parroted without the accompanying *facts* that the insurance she secured (from the timing of the purchase, it was purchased for this reason), paid for it all. In fact TWO insurers got to cover it! So much poor reporting out there causing so much unnecessary confusion.

  14. Weswieann says:

    Say what you will, no matter how much lipstick you put on the pig, the fact still remains that AH is and will always be a golddiger, capable of perpetrating the most intensely evil acts for self-gain. The trail of victims behind her is testament to that irrefutable fact. There are simply no two ways around it.

  15. Weswieann says:

    Say what you will, no matter how much lipstick you put on the pig, the fact still remains that AH is and will always be a gold digger, capable of perpetrating the most evil acts for self gain. The trail of victims behind her is testament to that irrefutable fact.

  16. Renae says:

    Excellent article. It’s good to see a true account of the events rather than seeing sensationalized tabloid headlines. It amazes me how even though we all learned during the trial that AH had the entire $7m divorce settlement for over a year before Johnny ever sued her, and even though your article reminds us of this fact again, that her fans still argue that she couldn’t fulfill her pymts bc she spent all the $$ on legal fees bc Johnny kept suing her. How many times do they have to be informed that she had the entire $7m in her bank account for 13 mths before Johnny ever sent paperwork to her informing her he planned to sue. Why didn’t she donate it during those 13 mths? And she had a lot of it well before then. Johnny only sued her 1 time and she had the full amt of $7m for over a year before he sued her.

    It was also proven she lied abt spending all the $7m on legal fees as we all learned that her insurance companies paid all of her legal fees. ALL OF THEM. She paid NOTHING.

    Another thing they harp on which also isn’t true. They keep saying that she paid a lot of money to those charities before the trial, but in reality, Johnny and Elon paid those amounts FOR her. It didn’t come from her hands or from her bank account. She didn’t make the payments. Johnny & Elon did. This was also found out in the trial. All proven facts during the trial. I just don’t get why her fans keep repeating those same lines as arguments as to why she didn’t donate the money like she said she did. Those lines of hers, that they keep repeating now, were all proven false in court. She admitted it during the trial.

    So many more things to say but I just wanted to touch on these comments I’m reading from her fans. It’s like they didn’t read the entire article.

    This article was fantastic and truly a breath of fresh air! Thank you so much for the time you put into this very on-point and accurate article!

  17. Dory says:

    Great article. Specially the part of the organization’s responsibility on all this fiasco. ACLU acted like a criminals. It was a Quid pro quo, she was supposed to give them $3.5m and more of Musk’s money and in return they helped her defame Depp, wrote the Op-ed and made her pr campaign as an ambassador of women’s rights. To this day they haven’t admitted they are just as guilty as Heard and have not even apologized to Depp.

  18. Sandra says:

    CHLA did thank her on their newsletter. They didn’t know when the donation was due because they were told it was going to be paid when Amber received her settlement. ACLU said they were being paid over time to help Amber with her lie. They great created the pledge form after she was sued. That is why it was never signed and dated.

  19. Helene Efraimsen says:

    Even her sister told at one point that Amber Heard NEVER intended to pay a dime to these charities! It was all ONE BIG UGLY HOAX! The year she received all the money, she took all her socalled friends – I’d call them her accomplices- on a very big would trip, you can see all her stories in her in IG😡 Any charity should learn of this and take their policies up for a proper update😏 she is nothing but a big #ConTrepreneur🤡😡

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