Britney Spears has shared a lengthy voice recording about the “abuse” she says she endured during the conservatorship she was placed under for almost 14 years.
The 22-minute audio recording was posted on her Twitter and YouTube accounts on Sunday evening, but the tweet was soon taken down and the YouTube link was made private.
“How the fuck did they get away with it?” the Grammy-winning pop star questioned, according to a copy of the recording captured before it was taken down. “How is there a God?”
In the video, Britney said she had been offered interviews and other opportunities to speak about her experiences, but had ultimately decided against it.
“I really don’t think any of that is relevant, getting paid to tell your story. I feel like it’s kind of silly,” she explained.
Britney also said she didn’t speak openly about the ordeal in the past due to fear of judgement, embarrassment and scrutiny, but added that she thinks she’s “in a place now where I’m a little bit more confident that I can be willing to share openly my thoughts and what I’ve been through”.
Britney began her account about a decade and a half ago, when she was 25 years old.
“I was extremely young. I remember a lot of my friends texting me and calling me, extremely close, and they wanted to see me,” she said.
“I honestly still to this day don’t know what really I did,” the chart-topping star continued, adding that her father began to punish her by not allowing her to see anyone. “You have to imagine none of it made sense to me.”
“I literally spoke to a doctor in a British accent to prescribe my medication and three days later, there was a SWAT team in my home, three helicopters. And I remember my mum’s best friend and my two girlfriends – we had a sleepover the night before – they held me down on a [gurney].”
“I know now it was all premeditated,” she added.
According to Britney, a woman had introduced the idea of a conservatorship to the singer’s father, James Spears, “and my mum actually helped him follow through and made it all happen”.
“It was all basically set up,” she claimed. “There was no drugs in my system, no alcohol, nothing. It was pure abuse. And I haven’t even really shared half of it.”
Britney’s father oversaw the legal arrangement that gave him control of the singer’s life and finances, as well as various personal decisions about her health, parenting her two sons and other freedoms, for more than 13 years.
A Los Angeles judge ended the conservatorship in November last year, following a court battle and public outcry.
Britney went on to describe being hospitalised after the incident in her home, and feeling like “a robot” in subsequent years.
After the two-week hospitalisation, Britney said she began working on her 2008 album Circus, during which time she said she was fat-shamed on a daily basis, and was forced to go to the gym and made to feel worthless.
“My performances, I know, were horrible,” she said of the residency. “I didn’t give a fuck anymore because I couldn’t go where I wanted to go, I couldn’t have the nannies that I wanted to have, I couldn’t have cash. It was just demoralising.
“I was kind of like in this conspiracy thing of people claiming and treating me like a superstar, but yet they treated me like nothing.”
It was when she started recording Glory, her ninth and most recent studio album released in 2016, that she started to “get a spark back” and regain her confidence, Britney revealed.
However, she continued to remain silent, because “I had to just play this role that everything was OK all the time”, out of fear that “they” could “hurt” her.
After her Las Vegas residency came to an end in 2017, Britney said she was sent away to a facility due to a minor incident at rehearsals where she’d declined to do a certain dance move.
“The next day, I was told that I had to be sent away to a facility and that I was supposed to say on my Instagram the reason why is because my dad is sick and I need treatment,” she said.
She recalled her father threatening to take her to court if she didn’t comply, and telling her there’d be a big trial and “you’re gonna lose. I have way more people on my side than you. You don’t even have a lawyer.”
During her time in the facility, Britney said she had no privacy, and was monitored when she changed, showered and ate.
She credited her release from the compound to the attention garnered by the Free Britney movement, a social media campaign led by fans to end her conservatorship.
Britney said she was sharing her story now, because “How can I mend this if I don’t talk about it?”
She ended the recording with a message: “If you’re a weird introvert oddball like me, who feels alone a lot of the time and you needed to hear a story like this today so you don’t feel alone, know this: My life has been far from easy and you’re not alone.”
Following the end of the conservatorship nine months ago, Britney has married her partner of six years, Sam Asghari, in a ceremony attended by several of her famous friends.
Last week, she also released her first single in six years, teaming up with Elton John for a reimagined version of his song Tiny Dancer, titled Hold Me Closer.