Is Britney Spears being detained against her will? We have the receipts!


Our culture has a fascination with pop stars. Not just them but their stories. Britney Spears holds a particular fascination to the public because as a Disney kid, she’s been in our lives since the mid 90s. By 18, she was a pop phenomenon and her career only grew. World tours, albums, videos and awards soon followed. Her whispery baby voice and her killer dance moves became signature. No one defines the millennial generation more than Britney Spears. 


She married Kevin federline, now a former rapper who never had much of a career, and they had 2 kids. He ended up with primary custody.
The current….situation, began when her father, Jaime Spears was diagnosed with cancer. To hear her tell it she checked into a facility to deal with the stress. However, things soon seemed much more serious and fans became worried. 

Until 2007

The 2007 Britney breakdown made international news. It’s hard to think that any celebrity would garner that kind of attention now but that’s before social media. They don’t make stars like they used to. She released an album, blackout, during this time and despite her antics of shaving her own head and going out in public sans makeup and sanity, the album sold well and created her now signature line: It’s Britney bitch!

However, the Star never seemed to recover. Her father put her assets into conservatorship and became her conservator controlling her money and almost her whole life. This conservatorship has gone for 11 years with no signs to stopping anytime soon.

#FreeBritney

However, it looks like, the pop star has been in some sort of prison pretty much since that time. The current situation with her conservatorship came under scrutiny again when she unexpectedly entered a mental health facility for 30 days following her Father’s colon cancer diagnosis. Keep in mind that her Father also controls the conservatorship.


However, the 30-day mental health facility stay came alongside some other worrying things. Late last year after a very, anti-climatic announcement she canceled her Vegas residency. Word has it that ticket sales weren’t that great anyway. She posted to Twitter that she needed to focus on family. However, according to her statements in a recent May 2019 court appearance, she said that her Father forced her into the facility against her will and made her take drugs against her will. This is legal under the conservatorship but worrying, none-the-less.

In May 2019, Britney Spears and her month went to court to begin the process of ending the conservatorship. TMZ followed the story all day and although everything seemed to go well, she was seen leaving the court barefoot. Could it be more strange behavior or just tired feet?

Now, fans and other celebrities are on the #freebritney brand wagon.

As we know, things with Britney have been up and down since 2007. It’s been reported that she has bipolar (like other artists like Mariah Carey) and that she needs a cocktail of medication to keep her well enough to perform. However, the evidence around this is a bit lacking.

It has been reported that the medication that has been used to keep her balance has not been working. However, it has also been reported that she doesn’t even have bipolar disorder but, in the words of Wendy Williams, may have similar signs to that.  According to her former assistant she never saw signs of a mental disorder but that her father controls every aspect of her life including her access to a phone. Apparently, the fear is that she isn’t allowed a smartphone because they are afraid of what she might do if she had access to the internet.

People that Worked With Her

Some of the people talking about how controlled she is are the people who have been closest to her professionally. Below we have some saved comments that were tweeted out by fans and others sympathetic to her plight that show she has been in distress for years.

In a curiously odd line of legal wrangling, the singer also pursued a restraining order against her former manager Sam Lufti saying that he caused severe mental distress. According to Lufti, he hadn’t had contact with the singer since 2009 but in 2012 he filed suit against Jamie Spears for threatening his life and committing libel against him in 2008 while he says Spears was suffering from drug addiction. More on him below.

Here are some comments from people who have worked with her. These comments seem to indicate that Spears feels like she is in a sort of prison or cage and has been looking for a way out.

Investigations

This isn’t the first time that people have suspected that everything isn’t as it seems in the world Britney Spears built. During a 2011 lawsuit over a fragrance deal, the opposing legal counsel demanded her to testify and that the idea that she was unfit seemed to be a “sham” because she was currently on a 79 date world tour for her album. The lawyers got their wish and she appeared, pressed and dress but with Lufti and her Father in tow. The lawyers were unable to get alone.

Access Hollywood posted an investigation into the life of the singer awhile back. It has been pulled down and re-uploaded but this was a quality video we thought might shed some light.

Keeping Up Appearances

All this being said, it appears her Father and her team have been doing their best to keep up appearances of everything being just fine. If you look at her Instagram, which is mostly managed by others because she isn’t allowed a smartphone, they are currently reposting obviously old and reused footage to make it seem like she is working out, dancing, and doing yoga just like she normally would be doing. However, other statements paint a much less rosy picture and the lack of actually new and novel posts seems to belie some sort of coverup. Here’s a recent release of their efforts to assure the world everything is fine.

However, there have already been public cracks in the veneer. Her manager Larry Rudolph has stated that she may never perform again and that he has no motivation to make her perform again and the Vegas residency may be off for good.

Who is Lou Taylor?

One of the controversial figures around this story has been Lou M. Taylor who appears to be a talent agent in the L.A. area. However, it seems that it has been her and Jamie Spears who have been keeping a tight control on the singer for some years now. This tweet is a screenshot of an email she sent to her lawyer, Gary Stiffelman. Britney seems very reasonable, if lacking punctuation and proper grammer in the email trying to understand what is going on, who she is, and how to stop what was going on in her home. She felt so threatened that at the end of the email she remarks, “I can’t sign your checks if I’m dead.”

Fans Go Off the Rails

The result of this whole #freebritney movement has led to quite a bit of fan outrage. At her recent court appearance, fans were protesting outside with signs begging the court to end the conservatorship. It should be clear that most of the #freebritney movement has to do with the conservatorship and not with attacking any one person. In fact, some people from the concerned fans released this press release stating as such:

Tess Barker and Barbara Gray started a podcast called Britney Gram in 2017 to talk about things from her Instagram account. The pair started digging into the singer’s life because her Instagram posts became fewer and fewer and this led to a variety of concerns. These concerns include:

  • How was she able to produce 4 albums, do press, do tours, be an X-factor judge, perform various other shows, and keep up with her visitation to her children over the past 11 years if she was really that unwell?
  • Does the ability to work mean that she cannot provide basic food or shelter for herself per the definition of conservatorship?
  • What is the relationship between Lou Taylor and Jamie Spears?
  • Are Lou Taylor and Jamie Spears using the conservatorship to control her money?

To reflect their concerns, the pair put together a post on Medium about the men who control Britney Spears. According to them the pressure of being a famous icon with numerous #1 hits had left her without anyone to trust. When she hired Lufti, unexpectedly, she contend he was an ally of paparazzi. He controlled various aspects of her life including communication.

Conservatorship

California’s conservatorship system has been flawed for decades. The system is by some, considered as a way to completely destroy conservatee’s civil rights. California allows conservators for physical health and finances. Spears has both. The people in charge of the conservatorship must report to a lawyer and the fees for performing the work are modest. Her father earns about $130,000 a year to serve in the job and has only asked for modest increases. He also gets reimbursed for an office he has. The lawyer (Samuel Ingram III) is there to make sure no looting of assets goes on and that everything is kept honest. There have been no issues so far. The conservatorship must report to the court every other year and there have been no problems thus far. Jamie Spears asked for 1.5% of her Vegas residency earnings and it was signed off on. According to some sources close to the situation, as long as she keeps working and the money keeps flowing in, there is little to stop the arrangement.

However, the question remains, how can someone who otherwise seems incredibly capable still need such oversight at 37 years old? And is her father, a known alcoholic and abuser (according to her mother in a book published early in the decade) really the right man for the job?

What Does It All Mean?

The evidence seems to point towards the fact that Spears may be getting gaslit in a major way and that her father and others around her keep her helpless to further their own ends or at least to make sure Jamie Spears doesn’t end up destitute. He’s has had financial troubles most of his adult life due to various failed business ventures. The evidence also seems to show that the singer isn’t merely being kept from making bad decisions but that she is controlled in every aspect of her life. Is that fair? Is that warranted? We will all soon find out when the court reconvenes in the fall after professional evaluation that the Court ordered in May.

However, it is important to note that she is not the first (and not the last) child star to be suffering from a lack of maturity due to her career. She has worked her entire life. From childhood onwards, she has been constantly singing, working, and dancing in some form or another. Has she had the chance to grow up properly? Has she had the chance to handle her fame with maturity? Does she need someone to hold back the gates of the public and the paparazzi? Probably. That doesn’t necessarily mean that she needs to be medicated at all times. Does she still want to sing and dance? That isn’t clear either. Some reports state that she’d rather be a Mom than a pop-star at this stage of her life. Her dancing has become stiffer and her vocals are pre-recorded and she mostly lip syncs these days over singing live. Perhaps, despite the public’s desire to see her, her own feelings about her career have changed and perhaps that is what Jamie Spears is really trying to keep going. It appears that at some stages he may have used custody with her children as leverage for this purpose and that is truly cruel. Perhaps the only mental anguish in her life comes from those closest to her and that could be the greatest crime of all.

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