Despite its 13-year existence, the public continues to learn more and more about Britney Spears’ conservatorship, and more specifically, how the singer herself feels about it. During a court hearing last month, she labeled the court arrangement as “abusive” and pleaded for a judge to terminate it. While the conservatorship was not removed, the singer’s desire for its end was not hidden at all in the days leading up to the hearing.
According to an investigation conducted by The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino, Britney made a 911 call on the eve of the June 23 hearing to “report herself as a victim of conservatorship abuse.”
The publication confirmed the call thanks to a person close to the singer and law enforcement in Ventura County, California. Normally, emergency calls in California are accessible to the public, but the county sealed the records of the call citing an ongoing investigation. They added that the singer’s team began “texting one another frantically” as they were all worried about what Spears could say in court the following day.
The same report from The New Yorker also revealed that the conservatorship controls Spears so tightly that she was often forced to borrow phones from strangers at gyms and grocery stores.
“Last time she called me, she was at Ralphs, in Calabasas,” her former manager Sam Lufti said in the article. “After she hung up, I got a call from the same number — it’s an Asian doctor, who says, ‘Wow, this is surreal, Britney just borrowed my phone.’ Five years ago, she borrowed a phone at the gym and just made off with it.”
You can read the full piece on The New Yorker here.