“She knows it was the wrong thing to do, and she’s sorry,” Brown’s attorney John Q. Kelley told NEWSWEEK. “But I don’t think it’s damaging to the civil case. What does selling pictures have to do with the brutal butchering of two people?”

The twentysomething Dominique has made several appearances on tabloid TV shows, mourning her sister and attacking O.J. But Kelley insists that she’s always had the “best interests of the children at heart.” She put the National Enquirer checks in a “segregated account,” he said, and hasn’t used “one penny of it.” The money will go to the kids when Dominique is sure that O.J. won’t have access to it. Says Kelley, “There is nothing sinister about this.”