Photo Credit: Stevie J Raw
Format + Interview by: Isabella Vega
Transcript by: Amy Espinoza
I first came across Stevie J. Raw through Victoria Mary retweeting his charity stream for Great Ormond Street. There was something about him that struck me (and no, it wasn't just his accent). It was the tone of his words - all at once gentle, kind, easygoing, and assertive. I then began to binge his videos, and while the catchy titles and thumbnails may fool you, don't be deceived - this is a man that creates every video with care and attention to detail to bring everyone the truth. In this interview, I found a great friend (who later introduced me to two other fantastic people), a man passionate about the truth, and most of all - a genuine soul. I hope that, since you all know his voice, you can read his words and imagine them being laced with the same fervor and passion with which he said them to me over Zoom, and support a man tirelessly working to clear Johnny's name and bringing so much hope to every single viewer of his work.
Isabella: It is so awesome to meet you! If you don’t mind, please introduce yourself :)
Stevie: Yeah, absolutely. My name is Stevie J, I’ve got this youtube channel “Stevie J Raw”. I’m living down here in Australia- we’ve just come out of lockdown which is great- and following the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard cases, both in the UK and Virginia, very, very interesting. Lovely to meet you as well.
Isabella: How did you first hear about this case? What were your thoughts, and whose side did you take?
Stevie: I first heard about this case back in 2016, and honestly I didn’t think much of it at the time. I thought it was just another Hollywood tabloid drama, and it was probably a case of, both of them were just being Hollywood celebrities, you know, doing what they do and playing it up. All you hear, of course, is what’s in the headlines, so hearing about drug abuse from Johnny, and the alleged allegations and things like that - honestly, I didn’t know a lot about Johnny Depp at the time - so I felt like he may have been guilty of it, but I really didn’t know. I suppose my initial thoughts were almost nothing, I just thought it was another typical drama in Hollywood. Once I started to learn a bit more, well, it became very, very interesting, that’s for sure.
Isabella: Was there a change in your perspective? What piece of evidence/moment was the thing to change your mind/confirm your beliefs?
Stevie: I think so, yeah. Like many people, it was hearing the audio. Once I heard that, it really confirmed for me, and almost made me feel a little bit ill, to be honest, that I hadn’t paid more attention to it sooner, but I think, in fairness to me, and to other people as well, without any of that, without hearing that evidence, without hearing that audio, it really is up to the headlines to tell us what’s going on. So it was very interesting to hear that audio, and like I said, it made me feel a bit ill that I hadn’t delved deeper into the case. Once I heard that, I instantly knew that Johnny Depp was innocent, and that she was the abuser. Amber Heard, and the way that she speaks in that audio, it was really chilling to me. It was chilling to hear just how different she was in that private conversation, both the private conversations that we heard, and how different she was from that to what she’s like in public, and what she’s been saying, and all those things that she’s said about being a victim as well.
Isabella: How did you start your streaming project? What made you passionate enough to start?
Stevie: That’s a great question. I suppose in the beginning, when I started doing this coverage, I was trying to just get the best message out there because I could see that the mainstream media was telling lies all of the time. I think - from memory - one of the first videos I did was about the dogs being held out of the window incident. I started off covering it in kind of a comedic way, putting clips into the videos that were kind of funny, putting memes in, things like that, just to highlight how ridiculous her claims were. But as I got deeper and deeper into it, I started to find out a lot more, and see the deeper issues that surrounded the topic as well. I really initially started it just to get the word out there and let people know that what’s in the headlines is not the truth, and that people should be digging a whole lot deeper to find out exactly, based on evidence as well, what the truth is, and that Johnny Depp is innocent.
Isabella: I especially love the theme song on your videos. It’s just so funny, I crack up every time I listen to it...
Stevie: Yeah, it’s great. That was really impressive too. There’s a little bit of a story there: Gary, who wrote that song and performs that song, he is a survivor of DV himself, and he was one of the people I had on an interview on my channel. He’s an interesting guy; great voice, very talented. He wrote and performed that song, and he lets me play it on my streams whenever I like, so I like to open with it. I think there’s all these different avenues, and different platforms we can use to share a message. I think one of them is, obviously, Youtube is a big one, Twitter is another big one, all of those types of media platforms, I suppose you’d call it, and then there’s the face to face ones, like Youtube and everything - but music’s another one as well. Music can be very powerful, and when you take the words that Gary sings in that song, it probably doesn’t sound that interesting, but when it’s performed so well it just hits another chord with people, and has some sort of emotional residence. I really like it as well, it’s really catchy, it gets stuck in my head every day
Isabella: Definitely, and it’s really great that you have that emotional residence at the beginning of your streams so people are already engaged with what you’re saying.
Isabella: How do you decide what to cover on your videos?
Stevie: I suppose when I’m deciding what I’m going to cover on my streams, it’s really about looking at a topic. There’s lots of topics out there, and I suppose what I’ve learnt from the Johnny Depp situation is looking at the headlines gets my attention, but after that there’s a lot of work that has to be done to actually get to the facts of the case and what the actual evidence is of the topic. It’s so important to me to be credible with whatever I’m saying, whatever I’m talking about, and to have conviction with whatever I’m talking about. If I don’t feel invested in the topic, if I don’t feel invested in the issue, then I don’t feel like I’m going to do a good job, I don’t feel like I’m going to do it justice. First of all, having the facts and as much evidenced as possible, and then definitely making sure that I’m actually passionate about it. There’s a whole lot of topics out there that are, especially now actually after covering Johnny Depp, that are almost meaningless to me, given the gravity of Johnny Depp’s situation. I think one of the other ones I was quite passionate about was the story about Sophie Long. I don’t know if you’re aware of that one, but Sophie was a young girl who was being abused in her home, her mother was complicit in it, and the father was trying to get custody to try and help her. There was a video released of Sophie literally being dragged out of the car by her mother, back to this abusive house. That one really hit me as well and struck a chord, so I covered that, and I didn’t do a great deal of coverage of that because I felt like That Umbrella Guy was doing a fantastic job of covering it, another great channel, and so for me I did a couple of videos, just to make my opinions known and try to share that out a bit. That’s another topic that was really passionate for me, children being in trouble and children needing help, I think that’s just so important, and it’s heartbreaking to see kids in trouble.
Isabella: Definitely. You mentioned that after you learned about the Johnny Depp case other topics seemed meaningless. Do you think that in exploring this case and all of it’s complexities and all the different issues that overlap, that you’re kind of changing the content you cover? That certain things grab your attention or seem more important?
Stevie: Absolutely, it really has. I think, for me, covering the Johnny Depp case, it’s really... I suppose I look at it in levels and layers. I started at the very surface, with the headlines, and then I found out more and more and more. As I started to cover it more and more, and more and more people were coming and engaging with me and letting me know, sending me comments, sending me emails and messages, and letting me know what their thoughts were on the case - something that really struck me in the beginning was the amount of domestic violence survivors who would reach out and share their support for Johnny Depp, and I was really taken aback by that, I did not see that coming at all. That’s really helped me learn, and along the way, I guess, my content has shifted from, you know in the beginning I was sort of doing those more funny videos, putting clips in and things like that, then I really started to see and really empathize with domestic violence victims over all. I got emotionally invested in that, and hearing those peoples stories. It not only amplified Johnny's message, and what Johnny has been through, it made me learn so much. I learnt so much from all of these people who were talking to me about what happened to them, and how it made them feel, and sometimes as well, how they were able to get out of the situation they were in. It was all a very, very big learning experience for me. I talked about passion earlier, and it’s really become a passion about helping people. There's a lot of people I talk to in private that don't want to come onto a stream and don't want to do anything in the public sphere, but they send me messages letting me know that they really appreciate what I’m doing, and that just having my steams gives them a place to go and connect with other people who have been through something similar, it gives them a place to voice their opinions and talk about all the things that they’re thinking without necessarily having to put themselves out there in public. I feel like my main motivation now is to try to help people, it’s getting the truth out there about Johnny, but it really for me is an emotional journey, and I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying helping people if I can, and if not I’m really hoping that I can get the word out there to more people. I feel like the tide is shifting now in Johnny’s favor, I feel like the mainstream media is becoming more and more meaningless every day, and that’s another side poll that I have is to blow out the mainstream media. And we need more people like yourself who are looking for the more truthful story, looking for the evidence and writing things based on that, not just on what’s going to get the most clicks. I appreciate that.
Isabella: Thank you so much. I’ve had my own brush ups with the mainstream media as a journalist. It’s been a journey for me, especially since I am so young, because I think, especially as a child, you kind of just trust the media. You think “Oh! Newspaper! Source of information! Magazines, source of information!”, you don’t really realize “Oh, the Murdochs own Fox News, and they also own the Sun, and they have an agenda”. So it’s been an interesting experience to learn of all the intricacy. But if I can do my part to tell the truth, I will definitely be here.
Stevie: I hope people like you are not ostracized from the journalism community, because people like you are few and far between it seems. When I say mainstream media, and I call journalists out for their garbage, it’s not to say that every single person in journalism is a bad person, a lot of people who try to stand up for what’s right lose their jobs. I think that is really sad, and the more we can push to get that changed- and I think how we do that is supporting actual journalism, to not give any support to the people who are just doing what they’re told, and give full support to those who are doing the right thing, like you.
Isabella: How did you find/choose your guests?
Stevie: It’s really been one of those things that’s been a flow-on effect. Originally it was just me, especially in the beginning, it was just me sitting here talking to my camera. I started to think after a little while, how can I get more of this message out there, and there’s other people covering this topic as well, how can I share this message even more. And then I thought, having guests come on, whether it be other people who cover the case on Youtube, or it’s people who are involved and invested in it another way, I just thought that could be really interesting; not only for me to talk to them and learn more, but to really give the audience another perspective, and not just hear my voice in my own streams. One of the first ones that I really enjoyed was catching up with Jeannie, who created the Aquaman 2 petition. Really interesting, really nice lady as well. Hearing her talk about why she created the petition and all that was just so interesting, and it was also an added bonus there to show, well the petition has been called an online bot campaign to discredit Amber Heard, so to have the actual human being who created it on a stream was another motivation there, to show that the person who created it was not a fake, the person who created it is right here. Everybody can see who she is and what she’s about. From there the connections that I’ve made with people on Twitter and other platforms as well, it’s kind of just flowed on from there. From that interview, someone else messaged me and said “I’d love to catch up”, or somebody else who knew somebody else has said “I’d love to catch up”. Greg Ellis was fantastic to speak to. It was one of those things with Greg that, between me and another person on twitter, we were talking in another thread, and Greg just happened to be there and somebody else said it would be great to see Stevie J interview Greg Ellis, and I said “Yeah, I’d be absolutely up for that, anytime”, and then Greg messaged me out of the blue and said “Let’s set something up”. That was really fantastic. Some of it’s been planned, I’ve certainly reached out to people and asked them to come on, but then other ones like Greg, it’s just come about at random. The same with Andy Signore the other day, Andy streamed with Greg, then sent a message saying he’d love to catch up. Normally that’s how it happens. It’s probably 50% me going out there and asking people if they want to come on, and then the other half is just random connections that happen, which is great. Something that’s been really impactful has been my streams with domestic violence victims, I’ve just learned so much from that. Talking to those people offline as well, and away from the livestreams, and hearing more about what’s going on for them, has just been really enlightening.
Isabella: Has speaking out in support of Johnny Depp impacted your views on social media? What has it been like joining the #JusticeforJohnnyDepp movement?
Stevie: That’s such a great question. It has impacted my social media, I feel like it gives people a voice, but I really feel, like I was talking about with mainstream media, it is a double edge sword, it’s oh-so-dangerous, but it can also be such a great tool, to spread truth, to spread justice. #JusticeforJohnnyDepp, I don’t really attach myself to movements in general, but when it comes to Johnny Depp, it’s just such a powerful thing and a powerful group of people who are coming together, and what I feel like it's doing is not just joining people who are Johnny Depp fans and followers, it’s not just joining domestic violence survivors, overall it doesn’t matter what race, what gender, what age, people are all coming together to support Johnny Depp, and I see that as such a fantastic thing. I think with social media, that is a real positive, that Johnny Depp has brought all of these people together under a united banner, to fight for justice and truth over all, cause that's what it’s about at the end of the day. For that, I think it’s fantastic, and I mentioned being able to reach out to other people, other creators and people online, and being able to have discussions and really meaningful dialogue. But it’s also a double edged sword because on the other side of that, you have a whole lot of people who see Twitter as a barrier, social media as a barrier, and a protection, so they can say whatever they like, and there’s no accountability for that. There's a lot of people out there who spread misinformation, spread outright lies, attack people, so for me that's a huge negative. So I think it's a double edged sword. What I will say for social media vs mainstream media, I think you actually can find the truth a lot more in social media than what you can find in the mainstream. The mainstream has such a hold over every article, every narrative is written just how they want it, how they want it to sound, and after a particular audience, and that audience is the people out there who haven’t yet seen what the mainstream really is, what the mainstream media is really doing these days. Gone are the days when the media could be trusted, and unless you can see it with your own eyes, you really can’t trust the mainstream media, and I think that’s really sad. When I was a kid growing up, the news was actually news, you could rely on it to give you both sides of an argument. You could rely on the mainstream media to give you both sides of a situation and let you decide for yourself. But where we are today, the mainstream media treats everyone, not only like children, as though we can’t make up our own minds on a topic, but they also have agendas, and sadly that comes down to money. They want to make money off a certain agenda, off a certain narrative, and Greg Ellis talked about it as well, family court itself is a $55 billion a year industry, so when you couple that with the mainstream media and everything they do and the influence they have, there’s just so much money to be made, and that’s what they’re about sadly. Social media can really help and offer a platform to find the truth, and I just hope that people are responsible enough to really look at both sides. And I mean that, even in the case of Johnny Depp, please look at both sides, look at both statements, look at all of the testimony, listen to the audio, and then make up your own mind. And if you still don't believe that Johnny’s innocent after all that, well then I can’t really help you. That’s what I really would encourage people to do, take that responsible approach, and don’t react immediately as well. That’s another thing I’ve learned through the years, to not just react immediately to anything that upsets you or makes you angry, take a few minutes just to think about it, digest it, then if you need to respond, respond. Otherwise, let it go, there’s no need to even engage with people who are only out there for negativity. When you think about that one small interaction on Twitter, I like to think of it in terms of value- what value is it going to add to me? What value is it going to add to the conversation over all for me to get into an argument with somebody on twitter. It’s not going to add, generally, any value whatsoever. But as far as pointing out the truth, pointing out facts, and becoming a part of the Justice for Johnny movement, I’ve just found an overwhelming sense of community. People are really united behind each other, and really supportive of each other, because there's a lot of people who are domestic violence victims who are part of the support system for Johnny Depp right now, and I think it’s just so important that the community is so supportive.
Isabella: In this case, what do you believe is the most important aspect/the aspect that resonates with you the most in this case? (media manipulation, lack of justice in the system, awareness for male victims of domestic abuse, etc) Do you have any personal experience you are willing to share?
Stevie: I don’t have any personal experience, which I’m really grateful for. I haven’t gone through anything as horrible as what so many people have, and as what Johnny has been through, but I think the first and foremost issue here is domestic violence victims, whether it be female or male. I think in this case, with it being related to Johnny Depp, domestic violence towards males is a really critical issue. Looking at the US, there are only two shelters for male domestic violence victims, versus over 2,000 for women. I think there are so many men out there, and this is where it really resonates with me, there’s so many men out there like Johnny Depp who didn’t feel like they could come forward, didn’t feel like they wanted to come forward. Johnny Depp’s a private persona anyways, so he might never have done that without this coming up in Amber Heard’s allegations. There’s so many men out there who stay silent, who stay quiet, and don’t speak up because they feel like they’re going to be ridiculed, and that’s such an important part of all of this because that will change so much more. If we can change the attitude of men and they say ‘hey’ and they put their hand up, ‘I’m a victim of domestic violence’, the more men who do that and feel comfortable doing that, and the more we can change the attitude towards those men, and actually help them instead of turning them away, ridiculing them, telling them to man up, I think that’s where they real change can be. We do help women, and so we should, with domestic violence, there’re statistics out there that say that women are victims of domestic violence much more than men, and I absolutely would agree with that, but you also gotta remember that there's a lot of men out there who would be victims of domestic violence who never say a word to anybody, so its not recorded, it's not reported, there's no statistic for that. One of the things Greg Ellis talks about is the fact that ten divorced men in the US every day commit suicide, and to me that is just an absolute tragedy. Those mens are often fathers, they're obviously husbands too, and they’re human beings, they don’t deserve to be driven to a point like that where there’s no way out for them, they can not see any way out. So that’s where the court system comes into the situation as well, because the courts are so heavily in favor of mothers and women, in terms of family court, that men honestly feel like they have nowhere to go and no choice. One of the victims that I caught up with on my stream, a male victim, was talking about his case and saying that the judge essentially said to him that he had to pay a certain amount of money or he wouldn't get to see his son. That is just so sad to be because, not only is that illegal, a judge can’t do that, the only grounds that can be used to say something like that is when the child's welfare is in jeopardy, and in this case it absolutely was not in jeopardy, the judge was just saying ‘you need to pay this money, or you don’t get to see your son’, and it’s so, so sad. There’re men out there like that sho get ostracized by the community to, and that leads to all those mental health issues and the suicide rate. Not only can they not turn anywhere legally for help, but why also can’t turn to anyone in their personal life because the allegations made against them are believed by the community. They might’ve been a part of a school PTA or they might have been a coach of a team, all of those people all of a sudden excommunicate them and they have nowhere to turn. For me the main thing is to really get the conversation out there about men, really support men who are coming forward and saying that they're domestic violence victims, and change that attitude and narrative towards men who have been abused.
Isabella: Definitely, and as a male, do you feel that this has changed the way that you talk to your friends specifically, do you think you would be more inclined to talk about mental health, or offer a shoulder to cry on?
Stevie: Absolutely. Something that this has developed in me is a heightened sense of empathy. Before I caught up with all of the victims I’ve spoken to, I felt like I was a decent person, but it’s really elevated my sense of empathy. Hearing and speaking to, and reading messages from all of these people, it’s shown me so much. I feel like there’s been an emotional awakening in a sense, because it’s not something that I’ve ever been through before. When you haven’t been through something, you don’t have a great understanding of it, and when people that you speak to and that you trust share these things with you, and they’re very, very private, very personal things as well, so for people to trust me enough to share those things with me, it’s really opened my eyes to a lot of different topics and different issues. So yes, absolutely, if somebody that I know was going through something like this, it’s certainly opened my eyes more and changed the way that I would talk to them and help them deal with it. Twelve months ago I probably would have dealt with it in a very different way, and probably not the best, but after learning so much, I would definitely be able to help them more, and be more willing to as well.
Isabella: We’re on to our last question, unfortunately. You’ve been such a joy to talk to, thank you so much for being so authentic with your answers. Now I’m going to have a little fun with you, so let’s have a visualization exercise: You’re in a dining room, seated at the head of a very long dining table. It’s a nice, wooden dining table, very fancy, very luxurious, and everyone’s eating your favorite meal. Sitting at the chairs of the dining table, are people who claim that Amber Heard was not abusive, but a victim of domestic violence, or people who think that Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were in a mutually abusive relationship. If you were given the spotlight for five minutes to say anything to them, without fear of violence or fear of reaction, and afterwards you could bolt out of the room and never see anyone again, what would you say to them?
Stevie: I would start with this question: is violence against any human being acceptable? I would wait for the response, and hopefully, given that these are human beings, they would say no, of course it’s not acceptable to commit violence against another person. Then I would say “please listen to this section of audio where Amber admits to hitting Johnny several times, whether it be pots and pans- throwing those- or hitting him in the face repeatedly”. I would say listen to those audio clips, then I would ask the question again. The person who admitted to hitting someone in the face, to assaulting somebody, is that acceptable? I would hope that the answer is no. Then I would say “Now what do you think about the case? Who do you think is innocent and who do you think is guilty of domestic abuse?”. That’s my quick summary of what I would say and where I would start the conversation. To me, those are the critical questions share. We don’t want to be talking about all of Amber’s opinions that she has and the extra things that she throws in in an emotional sense, but if we just look at the key question here: is it okay to hit another person? No it’s not. Is it okay for a woman to hit a man? No it’s not. Because they’re both human beings, and in this case, who admitted to doing that? Who admitted to committing assault against another person? It was only one of them, and that was Amber Heard. She is obviously a person who, and I don’t have any professional training or anything like that so I don’t want to call her or label her any kind of medical condition, but she is certainly somebody who doesn’t tell the truth, that’s for sure, and she projects a lot of what she’s done to Johnny onto him throughout their witness statements. That was very quick, my response to that question, but to take up the five minutes I would say to people at that dinner table, “Here is a whole lot of evidence. Please, go and read through it. Read through the witness statements, read through the testimony, and then see where you sit with this case”. Just reading through the testimony, it’s very clear that she’s not telling the truth. And if I’ve got one minute left on that question, I would say “Just look at the testimony of Trinity Esparza, Alejandro Romero, and Brandon Patterson”. They’re the East Columbia building staff, and in the days after the May twenty-first incident, when Johnny allegedly threw a phone at Amber, and that was the week she took out the restraining order, so May twenty-first, the incident happened, May twenty-sixth, she took out a temporary restraining order. The days in between that, those three people who worked for the building- and it’s really important to remember they don’t work for Johnny, they never worked for Johnny, they worked for the building, they were employed by the building management, they all said the exact same thing: that there were no marks, no bruises on Amber Heard’s face. Brandon Patterson and Trinity Esparza also both testified that Amber tried to get them to change their story and make a public statement in People Magazine that they never saw her without injuries. I think I’ve used up my five minutes there, but those are probably the main things that I would say.
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