Accusations of sexual misconduct against R. Kelly date back to the early nineteen-nineties, when the R. & B. superstar began a sexual relationship with a fifteen-year-old girl he met while visiting her high-school choir class. He was twenty-four at the time. The girl later sued him for “personal injuries and emotional distress” suffered during their relationship, and he settled, but that lawsuit was just the first of at least six that have come to document a pattern of predatory sexual behavior, spanning almost three decades. In 2002, Kelly was arrested and jailed on child-pornography charges; that case, which centered on a nearly half-hour videotape showing an older man and a fourteen-year-old girl engaging in graphic sexual acts, took six years to go to trial. Kelly was acquitted, in part, jurors said, because the girl allegedly shown in the tape never testified.

Now Kelly is the subject of multiple criminal investigations, focussed on a wide array of charges, conducted by state and federal prosecutors and law-enforcement officials in at least three states.

Last Thursday, The New Yorker reported that prosecutors in Illinois are moving to indict Kelly on charges related to a new tape depicting sex acts with an underage girl, and, over the weekend, it was confirmed that witnesses are being called to testify before a grand jury in Chicago. A second grand jury has been convened in the Southern District of New York, based on investigations by the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. Earlier this month, prosecutors issued a subpoena for Kelly’s former accountant and manager to testify, according to documents I was shown.

Meanwhile, the investigative division of the Department of Homeland Security, which investigates sex trafficking, has formed a squad with roughly two dozen members, which is devoted to compiling evidence about a wide range of alleged crimes by Kelly. An official connected to that probe says that the squad’s leadership plans to convene a third grand jury, in the Eastern District of New York, soon. In addition, officials in Fulton County, Georgia, have reactivated a stalled investigation that was originally spurred by two sets of parents who went to local law-enforcement officials because they believe that their daughters are being held by Kelly against their will, in what they describe as a “cult.”

The D.H.S. investigation is looking, in part, at charges that Kelly transported girls across state lines “for immoral purposes,” in violation of the White-Slave Traffic Act, from 1910, which is more commonly known as the Mann Act. (There’s an echo of pop-music history here: the rock-and-roll pioneer Chuck Berry was convicted under the same law, in 1960, and spent a year and a half in federal prison.)

The D.H.S. investigators are gathering information about a girl who began a relationship with Kelly in 2015, when she was seventeen, which is below the age of consent in Florida, where she met him at a concert. The girl allegedly later became part of the “cult.” Her parents say that Kelly has held her and another girl (who met the singer in Georgia, when she was nineteen) in homes in Chicago and in suburban Atlanta. Kelly has since lost his Georgia properties and is now living in Chicago, where he was born. The two young women are still with him. A spokesperson for the D.H.S. said, “As a matter of practice, Homeland Security Investigations does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations.”

On February 8th, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York issued a subpoena for Derrel McDavid, who served as Kelly’s accountant at the beginning of the singer’s career, in the nineties; in 2000, he also became Kelly’s manager. The two parted ways in 2013, after a dispute about payments that Kelly allegedly owed McDavid. According to the documents I was shown, the prosecutors want McDavid to testify about Kelly’s financial transactions. McDavid would not comment on his subpoena.

On Tuesday, the families of the two girls who are living with R. Kelly expressed frustration that, despite the hours they have spent with investigators, no legal action has yet been taken against the singer. The Florida girl’s father, Angelo Clary, said that, last year, he and his wife, Alice, gave federal investigators documentation of when Kelly flew their daughter to meetings with him. Agents from Homeland Security and the F.B.I. have interviewed them at length. The Georgia girl’s father, Tim Savage, and his wife, Jonjelyn, have done the same. Kelly’s Chicago-based attorney, Steve Greenberg, did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but he has told other media outlets that his client “never knowingly had sex with an underage woman.”

The Clarys and the Savages have not seen their daughters for more than three years. Authorities have told the parents that their daughters, being of legal age, are free to go where they want. Police conducted a well-being check on both of the daughters on January 11th, at Kelly’s rented apartment in Trump Tower Chicago. A spokesperson for the Chicago police said that the officers left after finding no evidence of wrongdoing. But Tim Savage said that an Illinois prosecutor told him on Tuesday that officials are reluctant to conduct additional checks, because the singer might accuse them of harassment. “I’d like them to be ringing that bell every hour on the hour, so I know my daughter is safe, until they finally arrest him,” Savage said. “It’s long past time to get this done already, and I can’t understand, for the life of me, what the hell they’re waiting for.” Angelo Clary agreed, saying, “It’s high time somebody did something. How long are they gonna take?”

For nearly three decades, there have been people asking how long it would take to do something about R. Kelly. “For so long, people have wanted something to happen, anything to happen,” Kenyette Tisha Barnes, the co-founder of #MuteRKelly, a campaign to encourage streaming services and radio stations to stop playing Kelly’s music, said, on Wednesday morning. “But, for some reason, it hasn’t. #MuteRKelly is attempting to trust the process, understanding that within that process are systems and cogs that move at a turtle’s pace. Yet it’s time for the collective D.A.s and federal prosecutors to make an indictment.”