Actress Amber Heard says she has settled a defamation lawsuit with her ex-husband Johnny Depp.
Heard said in a post to her Instagram page that the move is "not an act of concession" and she said she has "made no admission" in the decision to settle the case.
"It's important for me to say that I never chose this," she wrote. "I defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed."
"The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimised [sic] when they come forward. Now I finally have an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago and on terms I can agree to," she wrote in the post.
"There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward," wrote Heard.
Heard said she believes that "popularity and power mattered more than reason and due process" in her case.
"I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system, where my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder," she wrote.
Heard filed an appeal in her defamation case earlier this month, but said she believes that even if a U.S. appeal was successful, it would mean a re-trial and a new jury that would have to consider the evidence again.
Depp accused Heard of defamation stemming from a 2018 op-ed that she wrote for the Washington Post.
A jury awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages in the case.
Heard was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages and no money for punitive damages for a cross-complaint.
