Perez Hilton takes ‘full accountability’ for way he treated Britney Spears: ‘I carry deep shame and regret’

Perez Hilton has claimed he regrets the way he treated Britney Spears during the Noughties, when he drove much of the gossip surrounding her troubled behaviour.

Spears suffered a breakdown in 2008, which led to her being placed under the controversial conservatorship she is currently trying to have lifted.

The pop star appeared in open court in Los Angeles yesterday (23 June), where she made a number of shocking claims about her treatment while under the conservatorship, which controls her financial and personal affairs.

Appearing on Sky News in an interview with Kay Burley, Hilton said he took “full accountability” for his behaviour in the past: “I can’t say I was just young and dumb.”

He said that initially he and others were “shocked and alarmed” with concern for Spears’s children but did not “lead with empathy and compassion”.

“I absolutely apologise and carry deep shame and regret,” he said.

Asked how he felt towards Spears’s father, Jamie Spears, Hilton said at the time he and others believed that he had “saved” his daughter.

“We forget, but she was really putting herself in dangerous situations,” he said. “It was a very scary time.”

Hilton recently appeared in the BBC documentary The Battle for Britney, in which he was described as the man who “practically invented” the celebrity gossip blog.

Among the most troubling claims to emerge out of Spears’s testimony this week was that she was allegedly forced to take lithium after publicly announcing that she was taking a break from live performances.

Spears made the claims in her testimony to open court in Los Angeles, in a landmark moment for her controversial conservatorship battle.

“Lithium is very very strong, it’s a completely different medication to what I was used to,” she said during her court appearance.

“It’s a strong drug. You can go mentally impaired if you stay on it longer than five months. I felt drunk, I couldn’t even have a conversation with my mom or dad about anything.”

She additionally claimed that six different nurses visited her home to monitor her and ensure she took the medicine for a month. She alleged that she wasn’t permitted to go anywhere during that period.

Read More

Watch live as Britney Spears fans gather near LA court amid conservatorship hearing

Piers Morgan says Britney Spears is a ‘legal slave’ who must be ‘freed from torment’

Britney Spears: What happens next as singer tells court she wants out of conservatorship