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Why It’s So Powerful to Hear Britney in Her Own Words

She exposes what she’s been through to try to end her conservatorship

Since 2008, the world has wondered how Britney Spears feels about her father having the legal authority to control almost every aspect of her life. Yesterday, she broke her silence about the conservatorship that was imposed upon her at age 27.

“I’m traumatized,” Britney told a court yesterday, speaking for 23 minutes. “I’m so angry. I’m depressed. I cry every day. I just want my life back.”

Reading from a prepared statement—at one point speaking so fast the judge had to ask her to slow down—Britney petitioned the court to terminate the conservatorship. Initially installed as a temporary measure after her very public mental health crisis 13 years ago, at some point it became more permanent, giving her “guardian,” a.k.a. her father, Jamie Spears, the power to manage all of her affairs, including her estimated $75 million fortune.

In 2019, Britney petitioned to have her father removed as her guardian, which was declined by the same judge she was before yesterday. However, a co-conservator, BessemerTrust, was appointed to co-manage her finances with Jamie. A “professional care manager” Jodi Montgomery was temporarily installed to oversee all life matters aside from money when Jamie was ill in 2019.

According to a New York Times report, citing sealed legal documents, Britney has been trying to fight the conservatorship for several years now, although this is the first time she’s publicly said anything about it. It’s something she addressed in court, telling the judge: “It’s embarrassing and demoralizing, what I’ve been through. And that’s the main reason I’ve never said it openly,” she said. “I honestly don’t think anyone would believe me.”

 

Now that she is speaking, however, Britney isn’t holding back—and the allegations she made yesterday are shocking. It confirms everything feared by the #FreeBritney movement—a viral campaign once dismissed as conspiracy theory—and more. Here are the most shocking, heartbreaking details from her testimony.

1. Britney has an IUD that her “team” won’t allow her to remove

“I want to be able to get married and have a baby. I was told, right now in the conservatorship, I’m not able to get married or have a baby,” Britney said, adding that she currently has an IUD that her “team” won’t allow her to have removed “so I don’t get pregnant,” despite the fact that it’s her wish to try for a baby with her boyfriend of five years, Sam Asghari. “I’m tired of feeling alone,” Britney said at another point, saying she feels “ganged up on and bullied” by the people around her. “I deserve to have the same rights as anybody does, by having a child, a family, any of those things, and more so.”

2. She was “forced” to do her 2018 tour and not allowed to take a break from her Vegas residency

Britney says she was “forced” to do her Piece of Me tour after her management threatened to sue her if she didn’t follow through with it. After that, she wanted to take a break before resuming her Vegas residency, which was denied. Instead, she was in rehearsals four days a week (“I was basically directing most of the show…I led a room of 16 new dancers in rehearsals”), which she says is the truth behind her management’s claims she wasn’t participating.

3. She was put on lithium without her consent

After she repeatedly told her team she wanted to stop doing Vegas (“It was really, really hard on myself”), at one point they seemed to agree. Then “out of nowhere” her therapist changed her medications, which she’d been taking for five years, and put her on lithium. “Lithium is a very, very strong and completely different medication compared to what I was used to,” Britney told the judge. “You can go mentally impaired if you take too much, if you stay on it longer than five months. But he put me on that and I felt drunk…I couldn’t even have a conversation with my mom or dad, really about anything.” She says her doctor sent six nurses to her home to monitor her, and she wasn’t allowed to go anywhere for a month.

4. She’s has to go to therapy twice a week in a public place

Britney says she is forced to go to therapy in exchange for the ability to go on vacation (remember, she is only able to access her own money with the permission of her guardian). “I should be able to sue them for threatening me and saying if I don’t go and do these meetings twice a week, we can’t let you have your money and go to Maui on your vacations.”

The location of her therapy appointments is also contentious—she seems to believe it’s intended to humiliate her, and keep the narrative of her mental health crisis in the news. “It was a very clever thing, one of the most exposed places in Westlake, knowing I have the hot topic of the conservatorship, that over five paparazzis are going to show up and get me crying coming out of that place,” she explains. She says she’s asked to have the therapy in her own home instead, but her request has been denied. And it’s not just the privacy aspect: “I have trapped phobias being in small rooms because of the trauma, locking me up for four months in that place,” she says, perhaps referring to a psychiatric facility she was admitted to in 2019. She alleges that a former therapist “100 per cent abused me by the treatment he gave me.”

She also claims that she was forced into a rehab facility that she had to pay $75,000 a month for to improve her image, despite the fact that she doesn’t drink alcohol, adding: “I should drink alcohol after what they put my heart through.”

5. She believes her dad “loved the control to hurt his own daughter”

“Not only did my family not do a goddamn thing, my dad was all for it,” Britney says. “Anything that happened to me had to be approved by my dad.” A little later, she describes trying to please him. “My precious body, who has worked for my dad for the past fucking 13 years, trying to be so good and pretty. So perfect. When he works me so hard. When I do everything I’m told.”

At one point, Britney calls the conservatorship “abusive,” and at another likens it to “sex trafficking,” in that she had all her possessions taken from her, including passport, phone and credit cards, and was forced to work seven days a week and live with a team of nurses and security guards. “They watched me change every day—naked—morning, noon and night,” she says. “I had no privacy door for my room. I gave eight vials of blood a week.” If she didn’t go to her “meetings,” i.e., therapy, or work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week, she wasn’t allowed to see her children or her boyfriend.

“I’m done. All I want is to own my money, for this to end, and my boyfriend to drive me in his fucking car. And I would honestly like to sue my family, to be totally honest with you. I also would like to be able to share my story with the world, and what they did to me, instead of it being a hush-hush secret to benefit all of them.”

Seriously, #freebritney.

 

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