Johnny Depp's sister has defended him at his defamation trial, telling jurors that he suffered physical and emotional abuse as a child and swore never to partake in the same behavior.
Insider reports that Christi Dembrowski - who is three years older than her 58-year-old actor brother - took the stand at the Fairfax County courthouse in Virginia on Tuesday.
She is the first witness to testify in the trial, in which Depp alleges his ex-wife Amber Heard defamed him when she claimed to be a victim of domestic violence in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed.
Since Depp first brought the case to her in 2019, Heard has filed a counterclaim in which she alleges that Depp beat her on at least 10 different occasions, usually while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
The actor has been hit hard by his ex-wife's accusations. After losing a libel case against British tabloid The Sun for branding him a "wife beater", Depp was forced to step away from the Fantastic Beasts franchise, in which he was replaced by Mads Mikkelsen.
Depp also lost out on a starring role in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which the studio announced would be discontinued in the wake of Heard's allegations. He also claims to have been boycotted by much of Hollywood.
On Tuesday, the actor's sister, Dembrowski, gave a heartfelt testimony in defense of her younger brother, who she claimed was often beaten by their mother, Betty Sue Palmer.
Per The Independent, she described her mother as "high strung, nervous" and often "angry", adding that this rage often boiled over into physical attacks on her husband and children.
Dembrowski said that their mother treated both her and her famous brother "similarly in how she treated dad", adding that she "screamed, yelled, hit [us], threw things, called us names."
Despite this, she explained that Depp never fought back and instead tried to "keep the peace."
Check out what Dembrowski had to say in the Twitter video below:"As [Depp and I] were older, we decided that once we had our own home, that we were never going to repeat in our own home anything similar to our childhood," she testified.
Dembrowski went on to testify that, as an adult, her brother avoided perpetuating any pattern of domestic violence and devoted himself to his two children, Lily-Rose Depp, 22, and Jack Depp, 20, who he shares with ex-partner Vanessa Paradis.
"Everything in life was about the children. When he was with the kids — the attention he would give them, it was just constant playing with them, listening to them, laughing with them, reading to them. Parties — you name it and he was there," Dembrowski said at the trial.
She went on to say that when Depp and Heard got together she saw a marked shift in her brother. "I saw a repeating pattern happening in life," she said, adding: "I recognized what felt to me a pattern that was a repeat, a pattern from his childhood."
However, she implied that it was Heard who was the aggressor in the relationship. Dembrowski also claimed that the Aquaman star would constantly insult and verbally abuse Depp.