As fans and supporters rallied outside the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Spears delivered an explosive 23-minute testimony against the conservatorship that’s controlled her life for 13 years.
“We knew some dark stuff was going on behind the scenes, but to actually hear it from her own mouth and hear the pain in her voice was honestly heartbreaking.
It has been a long and often arduous battle to convince the world that Spears is suffering under the conservatorship—a legal guardianship typically reserved for individuals with severe mental disabilities or elderly people who can no longer make their own decisions.
“Now, no one can deny us.
At the hearing, Spears compared her existence to that of a sex trafficking victim and excoriated her father, Jamie Spears, who, having served as conservator of both her person and estate, has been at the center of the conservatorship since it was put in place in 2008.
The June 23 hearing came on the heels of a series of developments that had put Spears’ situation back in the spotlight, beginning with her January 2019 announcement that she was undertaking an “indefinite work hiatus.” Around four months later, a fan podcast called Britney’s Gram aired audio of a voicemail from an alleged former paralegal for an attorney who worked with Spears’ conservatorship claiming, among other things, that the singer’s March 2019 stay at a mental health facility was involuntary.
“There were several red flags at the end of 2018 and in early 2019 that made me feel like something was definitely wrong with the conservatorship,” Radford says.
As Spears’ efforts to remove her father as conservator ramped up over the past two years, the #FreeBritney movement continued to gain steam.
But Kevin Wu, another #FreeBritney organizer, says nothing could have prepared him for the devastating scope of Britney’s testimony.
So I did my research and I was like, ‘Oh my god, how is she in this?’ I had watched her perform on stage and work her butt off for hours, but yet they were saying that she was incapacitated and couldn’t do simple things like provide food, clothing and shelter for herself,” he says.
We in the movement felt incredibly validated by the New York Times piece that published on Tuesday because those unsealed court documents proved that she had been fighting the whole time and that she was being silenced.
But while this fresh wave of support is gratifying, at the same time, Wu says he’s largely focused on the fact that, legally, nothing has changed for Britney.
Staying the course is more important than ever now that Spears has spoken out, adds Radford.