The American legal system may be broken, easily manipulated by the powerful, and frustratingly slow for those seeking justice.

But this week at least, it appears that powerful men will not always get away with their crimes.

On Monday, well-connected financier Jeffrey Epstein was charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy . His arrest followed a harrowing investigative report from the Miami Herald in November that claimed Epstein had raped dozens of underage girls for years with seemingly no consequence. Per the article :

“Epstein, a multimillionaire hedge fund manager whose friends included a constellation of entertainers, politicians, business titans and royalty, for years lured teenage girls to his Palm Beach mansion as part of a cult-like sex pyramid scheme, police in the town of Palm Beach found.”

One of the connections Epstein appeared to have benefited from was his relationship with Alex Acosta. Acosta, who was the U.S. labor secretary until Friday morning , arranged a plea deal with Epstein in 2008 that, as my colleague Tiana Lowe wrote , “effectively ended the FBI's investigation into the number of victims and perpetrators in Epstein's sick, sad world.”

Now, Epstein has been arrested thanks to new evidence, and Acosta has resigned.

But Epstein isn’t the only creep who appears poised to answer for his actions. On Thursday night, the singer R. Kelly was arrested on charges related to child pornography. Kelly was already indicted in February on charges of sexual assault and abuse.

Like Epstein, Kelly has a track record of alleged crimes spanning years into the past. The Chicago Sun-Times ran an exposé on Kelly in 2000, reporting that he had sexually abused underage girls. But in 2004, charges related to the possession of child pornography, the least of his alleged crimes, were dropped . Now, he’s been arrested in Chicago.

The reckonings of both Epstein and Kelly have been too many years in the making. Evidence of Epstein's alleged crimes has been available since 2005, and Kelly's since 2000. Newspapers did a commendable job of investigating and reporting, but for one reason or another, it took more than a decade for each of these cases to move toward prosecution.

While it's appalling that it took so long for each case even to reach the point where it is now, it's encouraging to see more people become aware of the rot infecting these elitist circles. As media attention and the public eye rest on Epstein and Kelly, let's hope they both finally receive the justice they deserve.