Your explanation makes more sense than anything else I've come up with, other than people just being (willfully) ignorant to the basic facts of the case, in which case we're back at the question of why they wouldn't educate themselves before signing on--they like his work or his personality or something. It's also interesting/gross to see the dichotomy between new sources who refer to the crime as "sex", albeit "unlawful," versus those that acknowledge it as rape.