OK, so he didn’t do it – which was apparent early on in the story.

But now its official: Colin Kaepernick, fellow San Francisco 49er Quinton Patton and Seattle Seahawk Richard Lockette won’t be charged with sexual assault in an April incident involving a woman who had had a brief affair with Colin.

She visited Lockette in Miami, where he, Patton and Colin were training together, in the hope that her “relationship” with Colin would be rekindled. Then things got “Exorcist”-style crazy in Lockette’s hotel room, Colin split and the woman wound up in the hospital claiming that she may have been sexually assaulted.

May have been, might’ve been – that didn’t stop TMZ from portraying Colin as one knife short of Jack the Ripper.

TMZ’s reporting – I use the term as loosely as possible – is just one problem in a culture that has such a cavalier attitude toward rape and in which men and women leave themselves vulnerable to “he said, she said.”

Why, for instance, would a young woman go to a hotel room where only men were present, men who were said to be drinking and smoking pot? Sounds like a 911 call waiting to happen. But then, she was apparently trying to turn a one-night stand into a meaningful relationship even though Colin had cut off contact with her last year when she claimed she was pregnant as an April Fool’s joke. Some joke. Then she tried to cry rape. It’s an insult to the men, women and children who have suffered such a heinous act and those who have been falsely imprisoned because of it.

Let’s be clear, however: Colin and company may be innocent of a crime but they are hardly blameless here.