The pop singer also made a 911 emergency call the day before her court hearing to report she was a victim of conservatorship.
Just a short while before Britney Spears' explosive court testimony during the conservatorship hearing, her mother, Lynne Spears, revealed her "mixed feelings" about the situation to The New Yorker. Lynne reportedly spoke politely, but in hushed tones, because she didn't want anyone to know she'd spoken to the media. She apologized that she might have to hang up abruptly if other family members walked in.
"I got mixed feelings about everything," the mother-of-three told reporters Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino. "I don't know what to think ... It's a lot of pain, a lot of worry."
"I'm good. I'm good at deflecting," she added wryly, per the publication. Lynne has been uninvolved, to a large extent, in her 39-year-old daughter's battle, but the 66-year-old mother recently decided to take a more hands-on approach after "Britney begged her for help," a Spears family source says, according to PEOPLE.
During a public court hearing in November last year, Lynne supported Britney's request to remove her father Jamie —whom she divorced in 2002— as a conservator. Through a lawyer, she told the judge that the father-daughter duo had a "toxic" relationship.
"Lynne feels there are a lot of concerns with the conservatorship," says the family source. "She feels Jamie has not been transparent with her and is helping Britney as much as she can."
In the July 3 New Yorker article, "Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare," it was also revealed that Spears had called 911 on the day before her court hearing on June 23, to report she was a victim of conservatorship abuse, states Good Morning America. Though emergency calls in California are accessible to the public, Spears' call was sealed due to an ongoing investigation.
"She really did describe this in terms of criminal abuse. She said, 'my family members and management involved in the creation of that legal structure should go to jail.' She said this in court. We know this from her and it obviously reinforces that -- it seems, she wanted to create a legal record of that complaint," Farrow said.
"We also know from subsequent other publications confirming our reporting on this in the last couple of days that officers were dispatched in that moment. So it seems like we know that testimony emerged from a moment of her being distraught over this arrangement."
Farrow added, "What we reveal is other conversations and records at the time show that there were complicated motivations beyond Britney Spears' well-being playing into this."
"Everyone we spoke to agrees that Britney was in genuine crisis in 2008 and her parents were sincerely concerned about her well-being but a change was necessary," Tolentino said. "Because conservatorships involve another person or people maintaining significant daily control over basically all aspects of your personal, medical and financial life, they are highly vulnerable to abuse even in the types of arrangement they're intended for."
"Every mistake [Britney] made, made national news, and many people we spoke to suspect she had postpartum depression and don't remember anyone speaking to her about it," Tolentino said referencing Spears' struggle with paparazzi, divorce, and custody.
The battle for Spears' freedom is ongoing and her next hearing is scheduled for July 14.
References:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/american-chronicles/britney-spears-conservatorship-nightmare
https://people.com/music/britney-spears-mom-lynne-has-mixed-feelings-about-conservatorship/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photos By (L) Rick Kern, (R) Lawrence Lucier
