Transparency Didn’t Delay Justice for R. Kelly or Jeffrey Epstein. Prosecutors Did.

From Epstein’s inoculating friendships with the rich and powerful to lax law enforcement and a politicized Justice Department, the systems that should have protected his victims failed time and again. For those aiming to keep the details secret, the Kelly case offered a playbook.

The first lawsuit against R. Kelly, the disgraced r&b superstar, for sexual abuse of a minor was filed in 1996, nearly a quarter-century before he would be held accountable in a court of law. Tiffany Hawkins was fifteen when she said she began a sexual relationship with Kelly, who was nine years older. He had met her in the sophomore choir class—he frequently returned to visit the class at the same high school he’d attended before he dropped out—and she became one of his backup singers. She alleged that Kelly also abused several of her girlfriends and fellow singers, who were also under the legal age of consent. Hawkins’s legal team filed her lawsuit late in the day on December 24, after most reporters had gone home for the holidays.

The unfortunate timing may have been forced on them by Kelly’s more powerful legal team or other circumstances, including the statute of limitations. Whatever the reason, Kelly’s representatives used the time lag wisely. By January of 1997, they had filed a lawsuit to make Hawkins seem like a spurned lover who was shaking down a superstar as part of a nonexistent paternity claim. No one covered Hawkins’s lawsuit, her seven-and-a-half-hour deposition never appeared in court filings, and subsequent motions disappeared from Cook County’s notoriously disorganized files.