James Devaney/WireImage/Getty
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.