On Sunday, Amber Heard marked Mother’s Day by sharing heart-warming news. Heard announced that she’d recently welcomed twins, daughter Agnes and son Ocean, to her family, which also includes her 4-year-old daughter, Oonagh.
“Mother’s Day 2025 will be one I’ll never forget. This year I am elated beyond words to celebrate the completion of the family I’ve strived to build for years,” Heard wrote in an Instagram post. She continued, “Becoming a mother by myself and on my own terms despite my own fertility challenges has been the most humbling experience of my life. I am eternally grateful that I was able to choose this responsibly and thoughtfully. To all the moms, wherever you are today and however you got here, my dream family and I are celebrating with you.”
It’s impossible to not be happy for or feel inspired by Heard and the life she’s made for herself after surviving not just years of domestic violence, but one of the most vicious online misogyny campaigns in history during her 2022 defamation trial. Her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, sued Heard for defamation over a 2018 op-ed in which she recounted surviving domestic abuse (though she never named her abuser in the article. (A U.K. court determined in 2020 that Depp is, in fact, a wife-beater who abused Heard.)
During the 2022 trial, armed with extensive, devastating evidence, Heard has accused Depp of rape, repeated beatings, and even threats on her life. In turn, Depp supporters and opportunistic online misogynists accused Heard of abusing Depp by framing her responses to his abuse as the actual abuse. Influencers and brands mocked Heard for crying as she testified about surviving rape. A jury ultimately found Heard liable for defaming Depp and determined that she owed him $15 million in damages.
“The disappointment I feel today is beyond words. I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband. I’m even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women,” Heard wrote in response to the verdict at the time. “It is a setback. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously… I’m sad I lost this case. But I am sadder still that I seem to have lost a right I thought I had as an American – to speak freely and openly.”
Heard’s trial and the public’s response to it held chilling, tremendous implications for abuse victims everywhere. The pervading online narrative became that the relationship had somehow been “mutually abusive.” The accuracy of this term is widely disputed by domestic violence experts and advocates, who say it promotes victim-blaming by wrongly equating victims’ responses to abuse or self-defense as abuse. Since 2022, the popularization of that term, as well as a rise in defamation lawsuits against survivors to chill their speech, continues to harm victims today.
Within months of the Depp-Heard trial’s conclusion, one research firm found that thousands of social media accounts had been created in the span of weeks during Heard’s trial solely to harass her, harass her supporters, and peddle misogynistic disinformation about her. The vitriol of the trial was so intense that, by 2023, Heard effectively stopped working in Hollywood and moved out of the country with her young daughter.
Against the misogynistic odds, Heard endured and survived all of this, and is embracing motherhood and creating her family on her own terms. In 2021, after the birth of her daughter, Heard wrote, “I now appreciate how radical it is for us as women to think about one of the most fundamental parts of our destinies in this way. I hope we arrive at a point in which it’s normalized to not want a ring in order to have a crib.”
On Sunday, a spokesperson for Heard told People, “Amber is delighted to welcome the twins and complete her family. Mama and babies are enjoying every minute. And Oonagh is happily running the show.”
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