Almost one year ago, a 39-year-old Britney Spears finally got her freedom after spending 13 years under a conservatorship overseen by her father, Jamie Spears. The effort was years in the making, branded in its early stages as nothing more than a conspiracy theory dreamed up by naive, overzealous fans. In its wake lies a far more disturbing reality: For more than a decade, the world watched as a reportedly controlling and erratic father deprived his adult daughter of her autonomy.
In a new, deeply investigated report for New York magazine, feature writer Kerry Howley acknowledges that there’s “no answer to the question of why Jamie Spears effectively imprisoned his daughter for 13 years.” After a multi-generational study of the Spears family, however, Howley writes that “it would be hard to conjure a deeper wound” than the one that seems to haunt Jamie Spears.
“These Spears men,” Jamie’s half-brother John Mark once told a journalist, “are something awful”—a legacy he said stretches back to Jamie’s allegedly abusive father.
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Jamie Spears reportedly lost his mother, Emma Jean, at the age of 13 after she shot herself near his infant younger brother’s grave. And Spears’ father, June Austin, was allegedly abusive; a family member told New York they’d heard that it was actually June Austin who killed Emma Jean. Howley notes that Spears inherited much of her late grandmother’s appearance.
June Austin’s children from his second marriage (to a woman named Jo Ann Blackwell) did not seem surprised by Jamie Spears’ choice to imprison his own daughter within a conservatorship, Howley observes. In fact, it’s allegedly something of a tradition in the family—the two said June Austin institutionalized their mother against her will, as well as Emma Jean.
“Jamie did to her (Britney) what my daddy did to my mom and Emma Jean,” June Austin’s daughter, Leigh Ann, told a journalist, per New York. “They are mean and they will destroy you if they can’t control you.”
June Austin’s son, John Mark, reportedly told the same journalist, “These Spears men are something awful... He ruined Emma Jean and he ruined my mama. He shipped them both off to Mandeville (a psychiatric hospital) from time to time. So I’m not too surprised about what Jamie’s done to Britney. It’s all about control with the Spears men.”
Last summer, Spears delivered powerful, heart-shattering testimony in which she outlined her experience of the last 13 years. She alleged that under her conservatorship, she had no privacy—even while changing her clothes. She recalled being hospitalized against her will and forced to take Lithium—the same treatment June Austin reportedly gave to Jo Ann—and said her conservators would not allow a doctor to remove her IUD so that she could have a baby.
Spears further told the court last summer that her father loved “the control he had over someone as powerful as me—he loved the control to hurt his own daughter, one hundred thousand percent. He loved it.”
Last November, Los Angeles judge Brenda Penny ruled in favor of terminating Spears’ conservatorship. The singer’s attorney, Mathew Rosengart, said at the time that she’d “helped shine the light not only on this conservatorship that was corrupted by [her father] Jamie Spears but she has shined a light on abuse in conservatorships and guardianship.”
“What’s next for Britney—and this is the first time that this could be said for about a decade—is up to one person,” Rosengart added. “Britney.”
