The key thing here is to know the actual partition that is encrypted.
Often in Linux Mint's installer that ends up being partition 5 or /dev/sda5
sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda5 anynamehere
You will then be prompted for your irrecoverable passphrase:
Enter passphrase for /dev/sda5:
If all goes well it won't say anything further. If it says ""No key available with this passphr........
In short the solution is just to use vgremove for the actual /dev/mapper device:
vgremove /dev/mapper/backups-backuplv
box mnt # mdadm --manage /dev/md8 --stop
mdadm: Cannot get exclusive access to /dev/md8:Perhaps a running process, mounted filesystem or active volume group?
box mnt # lv
lvchange lvconvert lvcreate l........