Britney Spears Full Testimony In Court
Britney Spears said on Wednesday that the people who control her affairs had refused to allow her to get her IUD removed so that she could try to have a third child.
Britney Spears passionately pleaded for an end to her conservatorship as she addressed a courtroom on Wednesday, saying, “I just want my life back.”
All parties involved in Spears’ conservatorship appeared remotely for the Wednesday hearing, presided over by California Superior Court Judge Brenda J. Penny. During the hearing, Spears said she has been “traumatized” and “depressed” due to the conservatorship, telling the court, “I cry every day.”
“I’ve lied and told the whole world I’m OK and I’m happy. It’s a lie,” Spears said, saying she believed that if she said this enough times it might come true. “I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized. I’m not happy. I can’t sleep. I’m so angry it’s insane. And I’m depressed. I cry every day.”
Britney Spears Full Testimony In Court in front of court ?
During the 23-minute statement she read over the phone, Spears told the court she wants to “get married and have a baby” but, due to the conservatorship, she isn’t allowed to do either of those things.
The singer, who is currently dating Sam Asghari, explained that she has an intrauterine device, or IUD, that prevents her from getting pregnant. She claimed that those in charge of her conservatorship won’t allow her to get it taken out by a doctor because they don’t want her to have anymore children.
Spears said she deserves to have the freedom to make decisions about her family.
Speaking about the last time she addressed the court two years ago — in a closed hearing at the time — Spears said she didn’t feel like she was taken seriously.
“I will be honest with you, I haven’t been back to court in a long time because I don’t think I was heard on any level,” she said, later adding that the court keeping her father, Jamie Spears, as her conservator didn’t sit well with her.
“It made me feel like I was dead, like I didn’t matter, like nothing had been done to me, like you thought I was lying or something. I’m telling you again because I’m not lying. I want to be heard and I’m telling you this again so maybe you can understand the depth and the degree and the damage that they did to me back then,” she explained. “I deserve changes.”
Britney Spears Full Testimony In Court
Spears detailed how she was medicated and forced to attend treatment programs against her will.
Britney said her therapist took her off her normal medications and put her on lithium “out of nowhere,” which made her feel “drunk.”
“I really couldn’t even take up for myself. I couldn’t even have a conversation with my mom or dad really about anything. I told them I was scared,” Not only did my family not do a g—— thing, my dad was all for it. Anything that happened to me had to be approved by my dad.”
Spears claimed her dad once made her attend a “small rehab program” that cost $60,000 a month after she had allegedly failed a psychological test.
“I cried on the phone for an hour and he loved every minute of it,” she said.
The program required her to give up all her possessions — including her credit cards, cash, phone and passport — and was given “no privacy” as she was observed at all times, including being naked in front of people while she changed clothes.
Spears also alleged that she gave eight vials of blood per week, wasn’t able to see her kids or her boyfriend and was forced to work for 10 hours a day, seven days a week.
“My dad and anyone involved in this conservatorship — and my management, who played a huge role in punishing me when I said no. … Ma’am, they should be in jail,” she said, addressing Penny, adding that the people who did this to her “should not be able to walk away so easily.”
Spears said she “would honestly like to sue my family” and to “be able to share my story with the world.”
“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 didn’t want to say it openly because I honestly didn’t think anyone would believe me.”
Spears called for her conservatorship to end “without having to be evaluated” and she feels the conservatorship is “abusive” and is “doing me way more harm than good.”
“I deserve to have a life,” she said.
Britney Spears Full Testimony In Court
In response to Britney’s claims, a lawyer for her father read the following statement in court: “He is sorry to hear his daughter in so much pain. Mr. Spears loves his daughter and misses her very much.”
Jamie has been Britney’s conservator since 2008. Under the legal guardianship, she does not have control over her personal or financial affairs.
Fellow pop star Justin Timberlake, who dated Spears at the height of her success in the late-’90s and early-2000s, released a statement on Twitter supporting Spears after Wednesday’s testimony.
“After what we saw today, we should all be supporting Britney at this time,” he wrote. “Regardless of our past, good and bad, and no matter how long ago it was … what’s happening to her is just not right.”
“No woman should ever be restricted from making decisions about her own body,” the singer and actor, who is now married to actress Jessica Biel, added.
#FreeBritney Movement
In 2009, Britney Spears superfan Megan Radford read a blog post about her idol’s new legal arrangement, and something didn’t feel right.
So Radford staged a one-woman protest outside the star’s concert in Dallas, wearing a T-shirt she’d made herself, emblazoned with a quirky slogan: “Free Britney.”
“I was all alone … I think some people definitely thought I was a nut,” Radford told CNN. But, she added, “when you really care about a human, it’s not that much bigger of a step to start advocating for her rights.”
Radford, 34, who says she never “grew out” of her adolescent love for Spears, had never heard of a conservatorship before. The Spears fans around her had little concern about the cause, and the phrase on her clothing wasn’t a hashtag yet — just a couple of words she’d read on a fansite.
“It was just a way of trying to convey the situation,” said Jordan Miller, the owner of the fansite and the man who coined the expression “Free Britney” in a series of breathless posts to his readers in late 2008. “I was 19, 20 years old … all of this came flying out of me.”
Today, those two words describe arguably the defining pop culture crusade of the internet era. The #FreeBritney movement, which claims the star is being kept against her will in a legal stranglehold that denies her even the most basic personal freedoms, has outposts around the world and has drawn intense media scrutiny onto the singer’s case in recent years.
Virtually all of its adherents’ claims — such as that Spears does not handle her own social media, that she is not allowed to drive or own a phone, and that she has been threatened or prohibited from criticizing the arrangement in public — are strongly denied by those close to Spears or involved in the conservatorship.
They say the order, which has been in place since 2008, exists for Spears’ protection and has helped the singer get her career and personal life on track — while noting the singer has never asked a court for it to be dissolved. Neither Spears nor her publicist responded to CNN’s request for comment for this article.
But the band of internet sleuths and hardcore supporters, once generally dismissed as fringe conspiracists, have nonetheless dedicated much of their lives to their cause of “freeing” her, spreading their concerns online under the ever-present #FreeBritney hashtag and winning over a number of celebrities and public figures. A New York Times documentary highlighted their cause earlier this year, drawing attention to the movement from beyond the avid Spears fanbase.
So for many of the campaigners, Wednesday — when Spears is expected to speak at a California court hearing, potentially ending a years-long silence on the matter — feels like a day of reckoning.
“It’s nerve-racking, because finally we’re going to have some answers and some insight,” said a Free Britney leader, Junior Olivas, who plans to be demonstrating outside the Los Angeles Superior Court. “We’ve been hearing from everyone around Britney, but not Britney herself.”
Spears’ father, Jamie Spears, was first court-appointed as a joint conservator of his daughter’s estate in 2008, along with attorney Andrew Wallet, following a series of personal issues that played out publicly for the singer. For most of that period, he also oversaw her health and medical decisions, and in 2019 he became the sole conservator of the singer’s $60 million estate when Wallet resigned.
Britney Spears Full Testimony In Court
