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When a judge granted Britney Spears the right to hire her own lawyer, the iconic pop star made it very clear that she wanted to end her father’s guardianship over her. After telling Judge Brenda Penny that she was “extremely scared” of Jamie Spears, the 39-year-old pop singer informed reporters that she was “there to get rid of my father and accuse him of abusing him. guardianship “. She also called for an investigation into how her father allegedly abused and controlled her after she was made her curator in 2008.
On a related note, Spears ‘new layer Mathew Rosengart told court on Wednesday that he hopes Spears’ dad will prove he loves him by stepping down. Either way, Rosengart expressed serious doubts about whether it was appropriate for Spears to be put under guardianship.
Salon spoke to experts who all said the same thing: There are too many people in guardianship right now, but the victims have no voice. Many echoed their concerns over the decision to put Spears under guardianship in the first place.
“I think Britney absolutely did the right thing in seeking mental health treatment; it’s just that I don’t think going into guardianship right away was the right answer,” advocate Haley Moss. autism and the first openly autistic female lawyer in Florida history, says Salon. “I think it was very predatory of his father.”
While some of the people who supported the move probably had good intentions, Moss added, “What people don’t realize about guardianship and guardianship is their very permanent nature. It is very difficult to do this. get out of it, because we’ve got I see we’re 13 years behind here, and Britney Spears still isn’t out of it. “
She added: “Just imagine that knowing how difficult it must be for your average person with a disability.”
Shira Wakschlag, senior director of legal advocacy and general counsel for The Arc – an organization that helps people with intellectual and developmental disabilities – told Salon that one of the issues in the Spears case, and for people with disabilities in general (it’s not clear if Spears herself is disabled due to mental health issues) is that they just aren’t taken seriously. This is evident in the fact that Spears is only asserting basic constitutional rights, such as being able to choose his own lawyer or making choices about his own body, and has to go to great lengths to convince people to receive them.
“One of the guiding principles of the work of The Arc, and the disability advocacy community in general, is that people with disabilities must be presumed competent,” Wakschlag explained. “Of course, you would assume that someone is competent to assess whether [they can] make their own decisions, or make their decisions with help, or do other things with help. But in fact, it is an important principle to state and guide our advocacy as it is often not presumed, whether by the general public or the courts or in other contexts. “
Anna Krieger, senior attorney at the Center for Public Representation, said this distrust of people with mental illness is compounded by a system biased towards medical professionals.
“The scales are tilting towards trusting doctors, trusting experts, and not trusting the words of people who have lived through the experience of having a mental health disorder or being labeled as having a health disorder. mental, “observed Krieger. “These are the people who are the experts in their own lives.”
Krieger recalled instances in which his clients attempted to be released from involuntary detention in hospitals. Her clients could often explain in detail how they could take care of themselves, but they were ignored as they flaunted their mental illness.
“They had symptoms, something like a hallucination or some other symptom of their mental illness, and this was given more importance than the very fact that mattered under the law, that is, the client was telling the judge, “I can take care of myself,” Krieger noted. “So I really think there is a deference to physicians in our overall system that needs to be unpacked.”
Wakschlag stressed that there are alternatives to guardianship and guardianship for people with disabilities who need help. The Arc recently released a statement with other disability rights groups (including the Center for Public Representation) arguing for one of these alternatives: assisted decision making.
“It has become a less restrictive alternative to the more widely recognized guardianship that can be used by anyone facing a restriction of their rights,” Wakschlag explained. “It can also be used as part of a guardianship or curatorship to ensure that the person has the least restrictive restriction on their rights.” It allows people who need help managing aspects of their lives to choose people they trust as supports and who can advise them in important life choices. This ensures that people with disabilities still have their decision-making autonomy, which is denied under abusive guardianship.
“The big problem with guardianship, and guardianship in general, is that a lot of people can lose their civil rights,” Moss told Salon, listing everything from the right to vote and choosing where you live to your ability to get it. a driving license. “When we talk about abuse here, the point is that at least for people with psychiatric disorders, it’s important to see that guardians and curators may not always act in the best interests of the curator or the service. ” In Spears’ case, this is made worse by the fact that she has a lot of money and assets.
“You just don’t have a lot of oversight from the courts,” Moss said. “The custody and trusteeship proceedings are generally confidential and private. So the fact that we have so much access to what is going on in Britney’s case is very unusual.”
Likewise, there is little public knowledge about the extent to which curatorships and guardianship are abused. The necessary statistics are simply not there.
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“One of the systemic challenges with this larger problem is that we really lack good data on this,” Wakschlag observed. “I think that’s one of the keys, getting more data to better understand the number of existing guardianships and guardianships. Make sure that monitoring systems are in place, that rights reviews are in place and that due process protections are in place Most state laws, or just about all states, have a number of rights protections in place, but it is also sometimes a question of whether those rights are Likewise, States must ensure that the institutions they have put in place to assist persons with disabilities are accessible to them.
“Is this really something people with disabilities can access and use? Wakschlag asked. “A lack of data makes it somewhat difficult to get a clear picture. “
Yet the Spears case is not just an example of someone who has had a mental illness in the past who is not taken at their word. Spears is a woman and sadly also faces prejudice because of sexism.
“There is this stereotype that women are ‘crazy’ and I am not able to handle adult stress or responsibility to the same extent as men,” Amanda Marcotte explained of Salon, discussing the “merger. “2008 public that brought Spears into a trusteeship. “His crunch was seen as proof of that notion. But in reality, I don’t think anyone could have really stood up under that stress level. And the point is, we see men in Hollywood all having episodes. mentalities at the time, and they are rarely criticized on a permanent basis as proof that they are incapable of being an adult who makes adult decisions for the rest of their life. “
Moss agreed with Marcotte’s thinking.
“When Britney was younger we expected her to be very mature, very adult, way ahead of her time,” Moss recalls. “Now that she is older and in guardianship, we treat her like a little girl. And yet, we treated her like a grown woman when she was little. We also treat women. “They act older, they’re more mature. And then we also sometimes treat them as less, once they’re older and more mature.”
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