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Kelly Loudenberg Biography

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“The Fairfax courthouse had made the witness list, along with most other court filings in the case, public on their website. Amber’s witness list included names like Elon Musk and James Franco, but ultimately neither would appear. The case was brought in Virginia; non-Virginian citizens weren’t compelled to give live testimony unless they volunteered to. If the lawyers couldn’t subpoena someone, that was that. Amber’s only in-person witness who was not a paid expert would be her sister, Whitney. Johnny would have at least ten non-expert in-person witnesses appear, which Amber’s camp claimed were all on his payroll.”

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“Johnny had nicknames for nearly everyone on the opposing side: Elaine Bredehoft was “Breadsticks”; Benjamin Rottenborn was “Rotten Egg”; Adam Nadelhaft, another lawyer on Amber’s team, was “Nadelcock”; and Elon Musk was “Mollusk.”

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“In October 2017, bombshell reporting from the New York Times and The New Yorker revealed that dozens of women, including high-profile actresses, had accused top film producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. The number of Weinstein accusers would eventually total more than eighty, with accusations that stretched back thirty years. Ten days after the story broke, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” Within twenty-four hours, more than 12 million social-media posts referenced #MeToo, and the viral social feminism campaign soon spread across eighty-five countries. Alyssa Milano quickly credited the phrase “#MeToo” to its originator, the activist Tarana Burke, who coined the phrase in 2006 as a way to raise awareness and promote solidarity among women of color who’d suffered sexual assault.”

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“The first draft of the op-ed was generated by ACLU Communications Strategist Robin Shulman, who sent it to Amber and her team for review. Robin wrote Amber in an email, “I tried to gather your fire and rage and interesting analysis and shape that into op-ed form—with mentions of a few policies and a growing movement. I hope it sounds true to you.” She continued, “Your lawyer should review this for the way I skirted around talking about your marriage.” Earlier drafts included the words “restraining order,” “marriage,” and “divorce,” which were later scrapped. Eventually, the team settled on these eleven fateful words: “Two years ago I became a public figure representing domestic abuse.”

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“Neither was Amber an “everywoman.” She was a Hollywood celebrity with money, an armored truck and driver, a revolving door of lawyers, PR wizards, and media connections at the ready. Her existence was totally alien from the day-to-day lives of most domestic-violence victims. This doesn’t mean she couldn’t also be a victim of abuse—but she wasn’t a stand-in for other survivors. Society tends to use celebrities as vessels to carry every social examination, every social problem, every social ill. But celebrities aren’t the norm they aren’t representative of anything except celebrity. Amber said time and time again that she chose to speak up about Johnny’s abuse for those who don’t have a voice. But Amber hadn’t assumed a central role in the #MeToo movement on her own; she was aided and encouraged by powerful institutions like the ACLU and the Washington Post, which viewed her as an apt representative for the latest cause célèbre, betraying their own detachment from everyday victims. Throughout the trial and its aftermath, many sectors of the media held the line on this narrative, trumpeting Amber as a martyr for the movement and selling her experience as exemplary and relatable. In their analyses of the trial as a systemic failure and “the death of #MeToo,” they failed to see their own complicity in constructing a myopic, unrelatable notion of social justice.”

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“The compensation question was where they had to deliberate the most. “Probably took three or four hours to just settle on a number,” Tom said. Some of the jurors wanted to give Johnny more, and others wanted to give him less. “Some people felt sorry that she probably wouldn’t have enough to pay him. Others said he probably won’t make her pay it all anyways. So let’s just make it what we think it should be, and not based on pity, right? We settled in the middle.” In terms of the one defamatory Adam Waldman statement awarded to Amber, in which he called her abuse allegations a “hoax,” Tom said they understood it was a contradictory verdict. “We talked about that a lot. We looked at the time that he made those statements versus after the fact knowing everything.” Tom said they thought Adam making those statements at that time, without true knowledge or evidence of a hoax, was defamatory.”

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“He said the jury noted these kinds of contradictions throughout Amber’s case—contradictions that accumulated week after week. They decided her story wasn’t just not believable, it was unbelievable, he said. “There are so many inconsistencies between what she said, what the pictures told and the story that was being prosecuted. There were so many holes in the story, it was hard for us to believe any of it.” The jury was made up of two women and five men. Tom said the women on the jury were tougher on Amber than the men. One male juror, whose name and juror number are unknown, spoke to Good Morning America soon after the verdict. He said Amber’s emotional testimony didn’t add up and they believed her to be the aggressor. “All of us were very uncomfortable . . . she would answer one question and she would be crying and two seconds later she would turn ice cold . . . some of us used the expression ‘crocodile tears.”

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“As more brands and corporations hurried to hop on the #MeToo train, they changed their messaging to raise awareness about issues concerning women. Nike launched the “Until We All Win” campaign to promote gender equality and empowerment. The condom brands Durex and Trojan focused their ad campaigns on sexual consent and sexual assault. Twitter bought its first-ever television ad during the 2018 Oscars, a sixty-second black-and-white spot focused on female empowerment and promoting a newly minted hashtag: #HereWeAre. Now these corporate brands could be concerned and “active,” without directly and materially addressing the systemic issues plaguing women, like poverty and healthcare.”

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