Public Health Policy Reviews 44:
VALKYRIES 5 – Gabby Petito’s Death is Ever More Tragic after the Amber Heard Fiasco.
Gabby Petito speaks to the camera in the only video uploaded to her travelogue YouTube channel. The video “screen grab” is courtesy of YouTube.
In July 2021, Gabby Petito – a neophyte cross-country travel vlogger from Long Island, New York, left her hometown for a road trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie.
Petito and Laundrie traveled together for several weeks before Laundrie returned to his Florida home alone in their white van on September 1st. After a month-long exhaustive search and worldwide media coverage, law enforcement authorities found Gabby Petito’s body near the Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming in September 2021. A subsequent autopsy ruled Ms. Petito’s death to be a homicide.
The relationship between Petito and Laundrie devolved into domestic violence in the weeks before her death. There is also body camera footage of police responding to a roadside dispute between the two before Petito disappeared.
Brian Laundrie subsequently went on the run from law enforcement. Officials found his skeletal remains in Florida’s Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park on October 20th after Ms. Petito’s homicide. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.
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Gabby Petito. Image source: FBI.
Stress, anxiety, depression, mental illness, and domestic abuse impact too many of us – and in significant ways.
Progress in supporting domestic violence victims and survivors has advanced in society over the past thirty-plus years. However, as the Gabby Petito case reveals, domestic violence is still a significant problem.
Concurrent with the devastating financial, social, cultural, and individual psychological effects of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic – there is an epidemic of violence and exploitation against women and children that has happened after COVID-19 began to shut down the world economy and social mobility. The exploitation encompasses the spectrum of abuse - from sexual assault and physical attacks to a stark rise in US gun violence from late 2020 through 2023.
However, women are just as likely as men to abuse children. In addition, some statistics claim women are more prone to violently attack children, given their primary caregiver role.
Public health should focus on the US population’s health, safety, and well-being.
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Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito, Image sources: FBI, The Schmidt, and Petito Families.
However, despite a plethora of US statistical data that reveals domestic violence is a public health emergency for American women and children, somehow, there is reluctance from President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services to identify and categorize an epidemic for what it is.
Perhaps Mr. Biden is too busy attempting to impress former President Donald Trump with his golf swing.
Nonetheless, American voters expected the Biden administration would be eager to differentiate themselves from the Trump regime after the public health disaster the former president made of the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, as we explained in Wednesday’s post, “classic liberals” like Biden, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, and Senator Joe Manchin are so busy courting support from conservative voters and “big money” corporate and private donors that they are always willing and eager to betray their loyal voters and supporters.
Just one of so many examples of this phenomenon is US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s recent declaration that gun violence is a public health crisis.
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Photo by Andreas Nast on Unsplash.
Instead of publicizing Dr. Murthy’s statement to the national media to rally their core base of Democratic Party voters who care about the issue of gun violence in an election year, Biden and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are ignoring the Surgeon General’s official report.
The Biden administration is too afraid of political blowback from conservative Republicans and Mr. Trump’s “MAGA” base to show any leadership on the issue of gun violence. It is a political strategy borne of pure cowardice and greed for power.
A similar self-possessed mindset influenced liberal celebrity and actor Amber Heard to betray the traditional feminist fight against domestic violence, sexual assault, and workplace inequality OF women and girls for personal gain in 2018.
The 2021 Gabby Petito tragedy happened during the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, between the two international Depp vs. Heard trials – and mere months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the repeal of Roe v Wade in 2022.
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Amber Heard discusses participating in the international blockbuster movie “Aquaman” at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con International. Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
All five (5) of the events mentioned above have had devastating consequences on the public health, personal safety, and civil liberties of women and children.
Moreover, Amber Heard’s international celebrity status magnified the impact of her false words and alleged malign actions on women and girls worldwide due to her former mainstream media influence, scale of popularity, and cultural recognition. Superstar actor Johnny Depp sued his ex-wife Amber Heard for defamation in the US Civil Court in 2019.
The jury determined that Ms. Heard lied about her 2018 claims of domestic violence and sexual assault against Johnny Depp. Amber Heard submitted the following press release after the verdict, “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… …It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously,” Ms. Heard continued.
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Depp at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival. Image: Wikipedia.
Is Johnny Depp a wife-beater? Is Amber Heard guilty of lying and domestic battery?
No one can ever fully know what happens between two people in an intimate relationship. However, Johnny Depp’s lawyers and fans relentlessly deconstructed Amber Heard’s assertions of domestic abuse over the past five years. Ms. Heard’s claims against her ex-husband are not credible.
While not fair, politically right-wing and culturally conservative opponents of feminism, female civil rights, and access to power and influence for women have used the “Depp–Heard” US civil case as a justification for retrograde social theories and misogyny. US Attorney General Murthy linked gun violence to significant public health threats to children, families, and communities On June 25th, 2024.
As President Joe Biden’s mental faculties deteriorate before all our eyes in real-time, it is a sure bet that Donald Trump will not direct his Surgeon General to investigate domestic violence as a public health emergency after he defeats Biden in November 2024.