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Britney Spears shares poignant message to fans about conservatorship: ‘I feel your hearts and you feel mine’

Pop star said that the legal arrangement left her ‘traumatised’

Graeme Massie
Los Angeles
Tuesday 05 October 2021 08:23 BST
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Britney Spears has thanked her fans for waging a vocal and high profile campaign to get the pop star released from her legal conservatorship.

The singer took to Twitter on Monday (4 October) to praise the “Free Britney” movement following last week’s court hearing in Los Angeles at which a judge suspended her father’s control of her business affairs.

“I have no words because of you guys and your constant resilience in freeing me from my conservatorship. My life is now in that direction !!!!! I cried last night for two hours cause my fans are the best and I know it,” she wrote.

She added: “I feel your hearts and you feel mine... that much I know is true.”

The judge will rule in November if the 13-year conservatorship, which was put in place after the singer was treated for mental health issues, will be terminated.

Judge Brenda Penny suspended Britney’s father Jamie as the conservator of his daughter’s $60m (£44m) estate

“The current situation is not tenable,” judge Penny told the court after the petition was made but did not end the conservatorship.

The court then named California accountant, John Zabel, as the temporary conservator of her finances.

At the same hearing, a lawyer for Jamie, Vivian Lee Thoreen, argued the conservatorship should be immediately ended, while lawyers for Britney want more time to investigate his behaviour while in the position.

During a June court hearing, Britney broke her silence over the conservatorship and declared that it had left her “traumatised” as she called for the investigation and jailing of those people who had overseen it.

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At that hearing she claimed that she had been drugged and forced to work against her will during the conservatorship, prevented from removing a birth control device and forced into a mental health facility.

The #FreeBritney movement, which was started on social media around 2019 by a small group of fans, has held noisy demonstrations outside court hearings in the case and was highlighted in the “Framing Britney Spears” documentary in February.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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