Britney Spearsspoke before a Los Angeles court on Wednesday, giving a fervent speech on the details of her 13-year conservatorship.
In her nearly 30-minute virtual address before a Los Angeles court and Judge Brenda Penny, the singer, 39, spoke out against her father Jamie Spears and her management team, saying that she is “traumatized.”
“I’ve lied and told the whole world I’m OK and I’m happy,” she said, adding: “I’m not happy. I can’t sleep. I’m depressed. I cry every day.”
Shortly thereafter, the “Toxic” songstress asked to end the 13-year conservatorship. “I just want my life back. It’s been 13 years and it’s been enough,” she said.
Jamie’s attorney Vivian Lee Thoreen also the court to share a statement from her client, saying, “[Jamie] is sorry to see his daughter in so much pain. [He] loves his daughter and misses her very much.”
Read Britney’s full statement below:
Britney Spears.J. Merritt/Getty
SPEARS:I just got a new phone, and I have a lot to say, so bear with me. Basically, a lot has happened since two years ago… I wrote all this down.
The last time I was in court, 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 when I came to court the last time. I brought four sheets of paper in my hands and wrote in length what I had been through the last four months before I came there. The people who did that to me should not be able to walk away so easily. I’ll recap. I was on tour in 2018. I was forced to do. My management said if I don’t do this tour, I will have to —
JUDGE: I hate to interrupt you, but my court reporter is asking, you have to speak a little more slowly.
SPEARS:Oh, of course. Yes. Okay. The people who did this to me should not be able to walk away so easily. To recap: I was on tour in 2018. I was forced to do. My management said if I don’t do this tour, I will have to find an attorney. My own management could sue me if I didn’t follow through with the tour. He handed me a sheet of paper as I got off the stage in Vegas and said I had to sign it. It was very threatening and scary. And with the conservatorship, I couldn’t even get my own attorney. So out of fear, I went ahead and I did the tour.
When I came off that tour, a new show in Las Vegas was supposed to take place. I started rehearsing early, but it was hard because I’d been doing Vegas for four years and I needed a break in between. But no, I was told this is the timeline and this is how it’s going to go. I rehearsed four days a week. Half of the time in the studio and a half of the other time in a Westlake studio. I was basically directing most of the show. I actually did most of the choreography, meaning I taught my dancers my new choreography myself. I take everything I do very seriously. There’s tons of video with me at rehearsals. I wasn’t good — I was great. I led a room of 16 new dancers in rehearsals.
It’s funny to hear my managers' side of the story. They all said I wasn’t participating in rehearsals and that I never agreed to take my medication — my medication is only taken in the mornings, never at rehearsal. They don’t even see me. So why are they even claiming that? When I said no to one dance move into rehearsals, it was as if I planted a huge bomb somewhere. And I said no, I don’t want to do it this way.
There was a week period where they were nice to me, and I told them I don’t want to do it that way. They said if I don’t want to do the new Vegas show, I don’t have to because I was getting really nervous. It was like lifting literally 200 pounds off of me when they said I don’t have to do the show anymore, because it was really, really hard on myself and it was too much. I couldn’t take it anymore.
So I remember telling my assistant, I feel weird if I say no, I feel like they’re gonna come back and be mean to me or punish me or something. Three days later, after I said no to Vegas, my therapist sat me down in a room and said he had a million phone calls about how I was not cooperating in rehearsals, and I haven’t been taking my medication. All this was false — he immediately, the next day, put me on lithium out of nowhere. He took me off my normal meds I’ve been on for five years. And lithium is a very, very strong and completely different medication compared to what I was used to. 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. I told him I was scared, and my doctor had me on six different nurses with this new medication, come to my home, stay with me to monitor me on this new medication, which I never wanted to be on to begin with. There were six different nurses in my home and they wouldn’t let me get in my car to go anywhere for a month.
Over the two-week holiday, a lady came into my home for four hours a day, sat me down and did a psych test on me. It took forever. But I was I was told I had to. Then after, I got a phone call from my dad, basically saying I’d failed the test or whatever, whatever. “I’m sorry, Britney, you have to listen to your doctors. They’re planning to send you to a small home in Beverly Hills to do a small rehab program that we’re going to make up for you. You’re going to pay $60,000 a month for this.” I cried on the phone for an hour and he loved every minute of it.
The control he had over someone as powerful as me — he loved the control to hurt his own daughter 100,000%. He loved it. I packed my bags and went to that place. I worked seven days a week, no days off, which 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 — and placing them in a home where they work with the people who live with them. They all lived in the house with me, the nurses, the 24-7 security. There was one chef that came there and cooked for me daily during the weekdays. They watched me change every day — naked – morning, noon and night. I had no privacy, I get eight vials of blood a week.
If I didn’t do any of my meetings and work from eight to six at night, which is 10 hours a day, seven days a week, no days off, I wouldn’t be able to see my kids or my boyfriend. I never had a say in my schedule. They always told me I had to do this. And Ma’am, I will tell you, sitting in a chair 10 hours a day, seven days a week, it ain’t fun… and especially when you can’t walk out the front door.
And that’s why I’m telling you this again two years later, after I’ve lied and told the whole world “I’m OK and I’m happy.” It’s a lie. I thought I just maybe if I said that enough. Because I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized. You know, fake it till you make it. But now I’m telling you the truth, OK? I’m not happy. I can’t sleep. I’m so angry it’s insane. And I’m depressed. I cry every day.
And the reason I’m telling you this is because I don’t think how the state of California can have all this written in the court documents from the time I showed up and do absolutely nothing — [they] just hire, with my money, another person and keep my dad on board. Ma’am, my dad and anyone involved in this conservatorship and my management who played a huge role in punishing me — ma’am, they should be in jail. Their cruel tactics working for Miley Cyrus as she smokes on joints onstage at the VMAs — nothing is ever done to this generation for doing wrong things.
But 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’ve told in the state of California allowed my father — ignorant father — to take his own daughter, who only has a role with me, if I work with him, they’ve set back the whole course and allowed him to do that to me, that’s given these people I’ve worked for way too much control. They also threaten me and said, If I don’t go, then I have to go to court. And it will be more embarrassing to me…
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I don’t owe these people anything — especially me, the one that has roofed and fed tons of people on tour on the road. It’s embarrassing and demoralizing — that’s the main reason I’ve never said it openly. And mainly, I didn’t want to say it openly, because I honestly don’t think anyone would believe me, to be honest with you. The Paris Hilton story on what they did to her at that school. I didn’t believe any of that either — I’m sorry. I’m an outsider.
And maybe I’m wrong, and that’s why I didn’t want to say any of this to anybody to the public. People would make fun of me or laugh at me and say, “She’s lying, she’s got everything, she’s Britney Spears.”
I’m not lying. I just want my life back. And it’s been 13 years. And it’s enough. It’s been a long time since I’ve owned my money. And it’s my wish and my dream for all of this to end without being tested. Again, it makes no sense whatsoever for the state of California to sit back and literally watch me with their own two eyes, make a living for so many people, and pay so many people trucks and buses on the road with me and be told, I’m not good enough. But I’m great at what I do. And I allow these people to control what I do, ma’am. And it’s enough, and it makes no sense at all.
Now, going forward, I’m not willing to meet or see anyone I’m not with — [I’ve met with] enough people against my will, 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.
Actually, I don’t want an interview — I’d much rather just have an open call to you for the press to hear, which I didn’t know today we’re doing, so thank you. Instead of having an interview, honestly, I need that to get it off my heart, the anger and all of that that’s been happening.
It’s not fair they’re telling me lies about me openly. Even my family, they do interviews to anyone they want on news stations, my own family doing interviews, and talking about the situation and making me feel so stupid. And I can’t say one thing.
The main reason why I’m here is because I want to end the conservatorship without having to be evaluated. I’ve done a lot of research, ma’am. And there’s a lot of judges who do end conservatorships for people without them having to be evaluated all the time. The only times they don’t is if a concerned family member says something’s wrong with this person.
And considering my family has lived off my conservatorship for 13 years, I won’t be surprised if one of them has something to say going forward, and say, “We don’t think this should end, we have to help her.” Especially if I get my fair turn exposing what they did to me.
Also want to speak to you about my obligations, which, I personally don’t think at the very moment I owe anybody anything. I have three meetings a week I have to attend no matter what. I just don’t like feeling like I work for the people for whom I pay. I just don’t like being told I have to no matter what, even if I’m sick. I would like to do one meeting a week with a therapist. I’ve never been before even before they sent me to that place — I had one therapy session with my doctor and then a therapy person. What I’ve been forced to do is illegal. I shouldn’t be told I have to be available three times a week to these people.
I’m talking to you today because I feel again, yes, even [acting conservator] Jodi [Montgomery] is starting to kind of take it too far with me. They have me going to therapy twice a week and a psychiatrist. I’ve never in the past to see a therapist more than once a week. It takes too much out of me going to this man.
JUDGE: Excuse me for interrupting you, but my reporter says if you could just slow it down a little bit, because she’s trying to make sure she gets everything that they’re saying.
SPEARS:Okay, cool. To be totally honest with you, when [Dr. Benson] passed away, I got on my knees and thanked God. In other words, my team is pushing it with me again, I have trapped phobias being in small rooms because of the trauma. And for four months in that place, it’s not okay for them to send me — sorry, I’m going too fast — to that small room like that twice a week with another new therapist that I pay that I never even approved. I don’t like it. I don’t want to do that. And I haven’t done anything wrong to deserve this treatment.
Ma’am, I’ve worked since I was 17 years old, you have to understand how thin that is for me every morning — I can’t go somewhere unless I meet people I don’t know every week in our office, identical to the one where the therapist was very abusive to me. I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive, and that we can sit here all day and say oh, conservatorships are here to help people. But ma’am, there’s a thousand conservatorships that are abusive as well.
I’m not sure how you make your decisions, ma’am. But this is the only chance for me to talk to you for a while. I need your help, so if you can just kind of let me know where your head is. I don’t really honestly know what to say but my requests are just to end the conservatorship without being evaluated. I want to petition basically to end the conservatorship. I don’t want to be evaluated, to be sat in a room with people four hours a day, like they did me before. And they made it even worse for me after that happened.
I’m honestly new with this. And I’m doing research on all these things. I do know common sense and the method that things can end — for people, it has ended without them being evaluated. So I just want you to take that in consideration. It also took a year, during COVID, to get me any self-care methods. She said there were no services available. She’s lying, ma’am. My mom went to the spot twice in Louisiana during COVID. For a year, I didn’t have my nails done — no hairstyling and no massages, no acupuncture. Nothing for a year, I saw the maids in my home each week with their nails done different each time. She made me feel like my dad does, very similar her behavior and my dad, but just a different dynamic. Team wants me to work and stay home instead of having longer vacations.
They are used to me sort of doing a weekly routine for them. And I’m over it. I don’t feel like I owe them anything at this point. They need to be reminded they actually work for me.
I was supposed to be able to — I have a friend that I used to do AA meetings with. I did AA for two years, I did three meetings a week, I’ve met a bunch of women there. And I’m not able to see my friends that live eight minutes away from me, which I find extremely strange.
I feel like they’re making me feel like I live in a rehab program. This is my home. I’d like for my boyfriend to be able to drive me in his car. And I want to meet with a therapist once a week, not twice a week. And I want him to come to my home. Because I actually know I do need a little therapy.
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And that’s all I wanted to say to you. And thank you so much for letting me speak to you today.
JUDGE: Ms. Spears, you’re quite welcome. And also, I just want to tell you that I certainly am sensitive to everything that you said and how you’re feeling and I know that it took a lot of courage for you to say everything you have to say today, and I want to let you know that the court does appreciate your coming on the line and sharing.
source: people.com
