By Andrew Dalton
Los Angeles: Britney Spears asked a judge to end court conservatorship that has controlled her life and money since 2008.
The dramatic request at a Los Angeles (on Thursday AEST) hearing came with her first words in open court on the conservatorship in its 13-year existence.
Spears called the conservatorship “abusive,” and condemned her father and the others who have controlled it.
Britney Spears: end this court conservatorship.Credit:AP
“I want to end this conservatorship without being evaluated,” Spears said in a long, emotional and sometimes profane speech, in which she condemned the legal arrangement and her father, who has controlled it for most of its existence.
“This conservatorship is doing me way more harm than good,” she said. “I deserve to have a life.”
“I feel ganged up on. I feel bullied and I feel left out and alone ... In California, the only similar thing to this is called sex trafficking, making anyone work against their will, taking all their possessions away credit card, cash, phone, passport.”
In the request, the 39-year-old singer revealed that she wants to marry her boyfriend actor Sam Asghari and have a baby, but the conservatorship won’t allow her to.
“I feel like they’re making me feel like I live in a rehab program: this is my home.”
Spears said she’d like for her boyfriend to be able to drive her in his car and she wants to meet with her therapist once, not twice a week.
“I want him to come to my home because I actually know I do with a little therapy.”
In one of the more surprising revelations, Spears told the court she had a birth control device implanted in her but cannot get permission to have it removed.
“I want to have the ‘real deal’, I want to get married and have a baby.
“I was told in the conversatorship I’m not allowed to get married or have a baby.
“I have an IUD in my body right now that won’t let me have a baby and my conservators won’t let me go to the doctor to take it out. “
Britney Spears supporter Gabriela Ruiz of Los Angeles demonstrates outside of the court hearing.Credit:AP
Spears described hiding her unhappiness from the world, and backed the public airing of her personal condition.
“I’ve lied and told the whole world I’m okay and I’m happy,” Spears said, explaining that she was in denial.
“If I said that enough, maybe I’d become happy. … I’m in shock. I’m traumatised. … I’m so angry it’s insane.”
“I’m scared of people. I don’t trust people with what I’ve been through,” Spears said about the idea of seeing another psychiatric specialist.
Jamie Spears, father of singer Britney Spears in 2012.Credit:AP
“It’s not okay to force me to do anything I don’t want to do. … I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive. I don’t feel like I can live a full life.”
‘Forced’ to tour
She claimed she was “forced” to go on tour in 2018 under threat of being sued by her own management if she refused.
“It was very threatening and scary,” she said. “Out of fear, I went ahead and I did the tour.”
Afterward, as she was preparing for yet another big Las Vegas show, she had a disagreement with her management over new choreography and feels she was punished for not being compliant enough, she said.
Britney Spears supporters listen to a feed from the courtroom outside a hearing in Los Angeles.Credit:AP
“Mam, I’m not here to be anyone’s slave. I can say no to a dance move,” she told Judge Brenda Penny of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County.
She said “false” accusations started flying that she wasn’t taking her medication, and a new doctor put her on lithium.
“Lithium is a very, very strong and completely different medication from what I was used to,” she said. “I felt drunk ... I couldn’t even have a conversation with my mom or dad.”
She claimed that when she told her dad how “scared” the new medication made her feel, he “did nothing” other than send her to a rehab program in Beverly Hills against her wishes.
“He was the one who approved all of it,” she said. “I cried on the phone for an hour, and he loved every minute of it ... He loved the control to hurt his own daughter.”
Spears pushed back on calls for privacy in the hearing, saying of the conservator arrangement: “They’ve done a good job at exploiting my life.”
“So I feel like it should be an open court hearing and they should listen to what I have to say.”
A Britney Spears supporter waves a “Free Britney” flag outside a court hearing concerning the pop singer’s conservatorship.Credit:AP
#FreeBritney fans
About 100 fans from the so-called #FreeBritney movement gathered outside the courthouse before the hearing, holding signs that read “Free Britney now!” and “Get out of Britney’s life!”
Jennifer Preston, 33, crossed the country from Richmond, Virginia, to be outside the hearing because, she says, “I’m a mum and I’m a fan.”
“We’re here to hear what she has to say,” Preston said. “She’s been treated like a child for the last 13 years, she hasn’t had control of her life or her finances, even though she’s clearly capable enough to do those things.”
Spears spoke in court remotely by phone.
Her court-appointed lawyer, Samuel Ingham III, made a request for the pop star to address the court at an April hearing. He said Spears has not officially asked him to file a petition to end the conservatorship.
Britney Spears has spoken in court in the conservatorship before, but the courtroom was always cleared and transcripts sealed.
The last time she was known to have addressed the judge was in May 2019.
Spears has since requested greater transparency from the court since then, and Penny has allowed far more to remain public.
The conservatorship was put in place as she underwent a mental health crisis in 2008. She has credited it with saving her from financial ruin and keeping her a top flight pop star.
Her father and his lawyers have emphasised that she and her fortune, which court records put at more than $US50 million ($66 million), remain vulnerable to fraud and manipulation. Under the law, the burden would be on Spears to prove she is competent to be released and free to make her own choices.
AP
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2021-06-23 21:58:28Z
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