The Free Britney movement arrives in Washington seeking real legal reform

Washington: When Cassandra Dumas heard that Britney Spears was going to have a residency in Las Vegas in 2019 she was thrilled.

Dumas, 32, is a software sales professional in Washington DC and a huge Spears fan. But she had never seen Spears perform live.

“I have every one of her albums and know the lyrics to almost every song,” Dumas says. “And I loved that she was this kind, goofy, funny, down-to-earth person.”

Cassandra Dumas at the #FreeBritney rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Credit:Getty

But Dumas’s dreams of seeing Spears in concert were dashed when the pop star cancelled the residency before it began and announced she was going on an “indefinite work hiatus”.

It was around this time that Dumas started taking an interest in Spears’s conservatorship – the mysterious legal arrangement, dating back to 2008, in which Spears’s father Jamie and a legal team control her estate and many of her life decisions.

“I was watching her posts on Instagram and could tell something was off so I started doing my own investigating,” says Dumas, who studied criminal justice at university.

California had previously been the hub of the Free Britney movement but activists are now campaigning in the US capital. Credit:

In April 2019 fan podcast Britney’s Gram released a voicemail message from a source who claimed to be a former paralegal at the law firm handing the conservatorship. The source alleged that Jamie Spears had been holding his daughter against her will since the beginning of the year, and that her conservatorship was supposed to have ended in 2009.

The release of the message sparked the #FreeBritney movement, a campaign by Spears fans for an end to the conservatorship arrangement.

“This is the biggest pop star on the planet and she’s being denied her constitutional and civil rights,” Dumas says.

“She doesn’t have bodily autonomy. I started asking myself: how can this happen in a first-world country in the 21st century?”

Dumas’s belief that Spears’s conservatorship is “a travesty and a massive injustice” only deepened in June when Spears gave testimony saying that was afraid of her father and that the conservatorship team had blocked her from removing an IUD birth control device.

Britney Spears pictured here in 2018, says the conservatorship will not allow her to have other children.Credit:AP

It was the first time she had spoken publicly in detail about her views on the arrangement.

“I’m here to get rid of my dad and charge him with conservatorship abuse,” Spears told the court at a subsequent hearing.

Spears was last week granted a request to hire her own attorney, a major victory that could change the trajectory of the legal battle.

Representatives Charlie Crist and Nancy Mace unveiled “The Free Britney Act” on a video conference.Credit:AP

The US west coast has been the hub of the #FreeBritney movement, reflecting the fact that Spears lives in Los Angeles and the legal process has been playing out in the California court system.

Dumas wanted to know what she could do to help and got in touch with #FreeBritney activists in California. They introduced her with three other Spears fans in Washington, and together they launched Free Britney America this month – the movement’s first chapter in the US capital.

“We’re living in the home of the federal government, the place where our laws are drafted, so we saw an opportunity to make change,” Dumas says.

The group’s goal is not just to end Spears’s conservatorship but to overhaul a system they say is rife for abuse.

It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks. Only days after meeting one another, the Free Britney America founders held a protest on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that garnered prominent coverage in major outlets such as The Washington Post and The New York Times.

This week Dumas participated in a virtual press conference to launch the FREE Act, a bipartisan bill, inspired by the Spears case, to reform the conservatorship and guardianship system that has been introduced into the US House of Representatives.

“Under the FREE Act, we would Free Britney along with the countless number of seniors and persons with disabilities being abused and exploited by the broken system,” Democratic congressman Charlie Crist, who co-wrote the legislation, said.

Also at the press conference was Rick Black, the executive director of the Centre for Estate Administration Reform – a non-profit group that campaigns against guardianship and conservatorship fraud and exploitation.

Guardianship reform advocate Rick Black, left, with his late father-in-law and wife Terri, right.

Black and wife Terri became involved with the issue after Terri’s 82-year father was “held captive” by a friend and landlord in Las Vegas with the assistance of a professional guardian.

Black says the police refused to intervene, viewing it as a civil dispute. His father-in-law, who had dementia, died in 2015 after contracting gangrene.

“We got thrown into an odyssey I thought could never happen in this country,” Black says.

Making common cause with the #Free Britney movement, guardianship reform advocate Rick Black.

“We lost over a million dollars, we were never able to protect my wife’s dad or spend time with him in private before he died.”

The landlord was eventually convicted of theft and exploitation after the death of Black’s father-in-law.

Black says such cases of exploitation are surprisingly common in the US, but that it was hard to get prominent media outlets interested in the story.

“Most victims are never identified and those that do complain are usually vilified, intimidated, and manipulated to ensure they don’t speak about it,” he says. “Guardianship abuse is often dismissed as squabbling inside dysfunctional families.”

Black, 61, is by no means a Spears aficionado and had not taken much interest in her conservatorship battle until two years ago.

A flag that has attracted more followers.Credit:AP

“I’m not big on celebrity, it’s not the world I pay attention to,” he says.

It was only when a journalist called him to ask about Spears’s situation that he started digging into the issue and decided to get in touch with the Free Britney movement.

“I was really impressed,” he says. “These 20 and 30-somethings had an interest that went beyond the celebrity component.

“They brought enlightenment to me and I brought enlightenment to them.”

Black flew across the country from his home in Charlotte, North Carolina, to be outside the courthouse in Los Angeles when Spears gave her bombshell testimony last month.

“It was one of the few days in this crusade where I have smiled and felt good,” he says. “We knew our assumptions had been validated.”

Black is upfront that Spears’ legal battle has been a “boon” for his organisation, generating unprecedented media attention and creating a sense of urgency among politicians about the issue.

“Britney has put a voice and a face to our claims that no victim has ever done,” he says.

“How can a vibrant, lucid, responsible mother-of-two and successful entertainment celebrity be locked in something like this for 13 years?”

After toiling for years Black believes there is a good chance a version of the FREE Act will be passed in this term of Congress. Senators as ideologically-opposed as Republican Ted Cruz and Democrat Elizabeth Warren are campaigning on the issue.

“None of this would have happened if Britney had not spoken up,” he says.

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