News broke earlier this week that Lakeeta Vaccaro, the estranged wife of Tyreek Hill, said in court records that the Miami Dolphins receiver physically abused her during their marriage. The outlet to break the story, TMZ, reported that it had obtained a new document in the former couple's ongoing divorce case, in which Vaccaro said there were "eight instances of domestic violence" during their marriage of about a year and a half, including Hill shoving her to the floor, spitting on her, and, per TMZ, others times "where she claims he got physical with her while she was pregnant."
This, typically, would be followed by other news outlets getting copies of the court records and confirming these details with stories of their own. But if you’re wondering why the reporting on this seems to have petered out after TMZ's, there's one reason: Nobody else can get a copy of the document.
On Thursday, a reporter for Defector Media requested from the Miami-Dade County family court division a copy of the document reported on by TMZ, specifically the amended petition. The clerk declined to release it to the reporter, saying the document is "locked" and considered confidential. When the reporter asked to speak with another staffer about it, the clerk simply repeated that the record was locked, and she added that "a lot of folks" have been attempting to obtain a copy of it.
Why is this document “locked”? The closest thing to an answer appears to come from another document filed in the case just two days after Vaccaro's motion. It came from one of Hill's lawyers, Seth Schneiderman, and said that Exhibit A of a recent Vaccaro motion—Exhibit A is the document in which she said her estranged husband physically abused her—contained confidential information. What would make it confidential? Hill's attorney cited a Florida statute that makes confidential records about "dependency matters, termination of parental rights, guardians ad litem, child abuse, neglect, and abandonment."
Schneiderman did not reply to emails asking for comment on the request for confidentiality. Defector did hear back from Vaccaro's attorney, Evan Marks, who declined to comment about the document being made confidential. Because nobody at the clerk's office would talk about it, the only clue as to the process behind the confidentiality comes from the rest of that document filed by Schneiderman, which said the following would happen:
The clerk of court shall review filings identified as containing confidential information to determine whether the information is facially subject to confidentiality under the identified provision. The clerk shall notify the filer in writing within 5 days if the clerk determines that the information is NOT subject to confidentiality, and the records shall not be held as confidential for more than 10 days, unless a motion is filed pursuant to subdivision (d)(3) of the Rule. Fla. R. Jud. Admin. 2.2420(d)(2).
This is why every outlet is forced to repurpose TMZ's reporting almost verbatim. Per TMZ, here is what Vaccaro described. She said that, during their marriage, Hill once shoved her to the floor during a conversation about a postnuptial agreement; once violently attacked her in a hotel room, "twisting her intimate body parts, ripping her hair out and grabbing anything on her person he could get a hold of"; and he displayed behavior that was "outrageous, beyond all bounds of decency, and is regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community."
TMZ, which historically has been well-sourced in the country's major courthouses, didn't publish a copy of the records it viewed. It did publish, a few hours later, a full copy of a lengthy statement from another one of Hill's lawyers, this one based out of Atlanta, calling what was going on a "shakedown."
This is not the first time that Hill, for years one of the top receivers in the NFL, has been accused of intimate-partner or family violence. In college, he pleaded guilty to domestic abuse and signed a document in which he said he had placed his girlfriend in a headlock. He was dismissed by Oklahoma State, transferred to West Alabama, and drafted by Kansas City in the fifth round of the 2016 draft. In Kansas City, police and child welfare officials investigated how Hill's son with his then-fiancée suffered a broken arm. The police investigation closed with no charges filed and the local district attorney saying he believed a crime had occurred but he couldn't establish who had committed the crime. (Kansas City radio station WHB 810 later reported that anonymous sources "close to the investigation" told them that the broken arm appeared to be an accident.) The results of the Kansas Department for Children and Families investigation, as is typical with child welfare records, are not public.
More recently, when Hill's South Florida home caught fire last year, an investigation by local firefighters said that the cause was a child playing with a lighter. In April of last year, Vaccaro's mother called Sunny Isles Beach police to report that Hill had thrown a computer and grabbed her daughter during an argument. Vaccaro told officers, per reporting by Local 10, that she and Hill had been arguing more and, when she would give her opinion, Hill would get angry and throw things. No charges were filed. Vaccaro filed for divorce soon after.
As for TMZ's reporting, the NFL has said it is reviewing the matter. A hearing in the divorce case is scheduled for Monday. A full copy of the request for confidentiality for the document in question is below:
