Amber Heardhas chosen to settle.

“It’s important for me to say that I never chose this,” Heard wrote in her statement. “I defended my truth 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 women are re-victimised 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 continued. “I have made no admission. This is not an act of concession. There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward.”

Johnny Depp; Amber Heard.Steve Helber/POOL/AFP/Getty; JIM WATSON/POOL/AFP/Getty

Johnny Depp testifies in the courtroom at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia, April 25, 2022. - Actor Johnny Depp sued his ex-wife Amber Heard for libel in Fairfax County Circuit Court after she wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Post in 2018 referring to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” (Photo by Steve Helber / POOL / AFP) (Photo by STEVE HELBER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images); Amber Heard arrives in the courtroom at the Fairfax County Circuit Court in Fairfax, Virginia, on May 3, 2022. - US actor Johnny Depp sued his ex-wife Amber Heard for libel in Fairfax County Circuit Court after she wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Post in 2018 referring to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” (Photo by JIM WATSON / POOL / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

A source close to Depp tells PEOPLE, “It’s a seven-figure settlement. The judgment is in place. But part of the point of appealing it for her was both the financial reasons but also to ensure there wasn’t a judgment in place against her — that has significant ramifications. This judgment is never going away. Depp has said it wasn’t about money. He just wanted the truth.”

In Heard’s statement, the actress compared the way her testimony in Depp’s U.K. libel case againstThe Sunin November 2020 was received to the way her more recent testimony in the U.S. was, writing “popularity and power mattered more than reason and due process.”

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“In the US, however, I exhausted almost all my resources in advance of and during a trial in which I was subjected to a courtroom in which abundant, direct evidence that corroborated my testimony was excluded and in which popularity and power mattered more than reason and due process,” she continued.

“In the interim I was exposed to a type of humiliation that I simply cannot re-live,” Heard added in her statement, as she noted that a successful appeal in the case would only lead to another public trial.

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“I simply cannot go through that for a third time,” Heard wrote, going on to say that the U.S. legal process “has shown itself unable to protect me and my right to free speech.”

“I cannot afford to risk an impossible bill - one that is not just financial, but also psychological, physical and emotional,” the actress added. “Women shouldn’t have to face abuse or bankruptcy for speaking her truth, but unfortunately it is not uncommon.”

Heard also stated Monday that she is “choosing the freedom to dedicate my time to the work that helped me heal after my divorce.”

Amber Heard.Neilson Barnard/Getty

Amber Heard attends the Saint Laurent Mens Spring Summer 20 Show on June 06, 2019 in Paradise Cove Malibu, California.

The appeal also argued the trial shouldn’t have moved forward since Depp lost the his U.K. libel case againstThe Sunover the British tabloid calling him a “wife-beater” — a claim that a London court upheld as being “substantially true” after Heard testified to back up the outlet’s words.

source: people.com