Don't take anything personal. Grab a first book about celebrities who liked to party and you'll see what's on the deep end of glamorous life and how talented women have to sacrifice their body to get into showbiz and remain there for just a few years of fame.
Rape is one of the most serious accusation you could throw on somebody. I agree with you on that, sounds pretty feckin extreme indeed, but these women have families and clearly care about them, too. Would they risk a public lie to the world knowing that may put their children, brothers and sisters in legit danger for the rest of their life ? If any investigating will show that they're full of, I can assure you that their closed ones will never have a serious careers from obvious reasons.
We all know Bill won't go behind bars, the things happened more than 30 years ago and Bill is almost 80 with obvious health issues. It's all about admitting that he done wrong. He still may be forgiven at some point as hard and absurd as it sounds but we all know he probably won't pay these women money after they decided to put it in the full media spotlight.
He never said 'no' to the accusations so case still open. He needs to make a public statement to put end to his own silence that drowns him even more in this shit... but he won't. He's afraid or just hiding something. We know that in his past his son was gunned down some long time ago. It's gonna be just my humble opinion but Bill may got himself into some truly fecked up shit in his younger years in showbiz. Maybe met the wrong people, maybe drugs, maybe rapes or something even more heavy... just me thinking out loud.
His silence doesn't help him at all, anyway.