Johnny Depp and Amber Heard reportedly engaged in mutual abuse, as claimed by the former couple’s former marriage counselor.

According to Variety, Dr. Laurel Anderson weighed in on the couple’s history of abusive relationships in testimony that was recorded on February 21 and filed in court on Thursday for the defamation case brought by Depp against Heard over an article in 2018 opinion on ‘surviving domestic abuse’.

When asked if Depp abused Heard, Anderson replied: “Yes, you’re right. He had been well controlled, I think, for almost, I don’t know, 20, 30 years.”

He continued: “They were both victims of abuse in their homes, but I thought he had been well controlled for decades. And then with Ms. Heard, it was triggered and they engaged in what I saw as mutual abuse.”

Anderson also claimed that Heard “sometimes started the fights to keep him with her because abandonment was her worst nightmare.”

The counselor also recalled Heard telling her: “If [Depp] were to leave her to de-escalate the fight, she would beat him up to keep him there because she’d rather be in a fight than have him walk away.”

Depp and Heard have been embroiled in bitter legal cases since they split in 2016.

The couple met on the sets of the 2011 film The Rum Diary and divorced in 2016.