Anyway, I think I've worked out the True and Honest timeline of where these Vic rumors came from and how the sex crap happened.
According to Chuck Huber, back in 2003 Chris Sabat immediately spread rumors to anyone he casually spoke to about how Vic was a kiddy diddler, both gay and preying on little girls.
According to multiple con staff members, most notably Jen Hunt and to an extent EriMin, constaff didn't like Vic and traded around nasty rumors about him between themselves. This got to a point where in ACEN 2008, while Jennifer was blowing off steam and hiding in the AMV room, she met then 18 year old Younique Bales, and told her an early version of the kidnapping story. This marks the earliest time I can find where a non-staff member is let in on these rumors, because Jen can't help but blab her made up insanity.
From 2007 on to 2010, Vic was on a downhill of popularity due to increasingly angry fujoshi who constantly made up the most absurd rumors about him - they were all about him being ragey and homophobic, however, not sexual. The rumors EXPLODE between 2009 and 2011 in response to Vic angering the fujoshi, but the content of them don't change. Suddenly in a reddit thread in 2012, someone says "I hear he has sex with underage Ed cosplayers and is creepy" without any further context. In 2013, Lying Lynn's story gets leaked by Younique on AMV.org. Occasionally dedicated congoers or constaff will make snide comments from 2010 onward in tweets about him being creepy. (and get ignored)
In 2014 Vic gets announced as the voice of Rin in Free!, an ecchi-for-girls anime with a side helping of yaoi bait. Suddenly accusations of sexual misconduct erupt all over tumblr and twitter, and the people pushing this claim that these accusations have been around 'over a decade'.
I think I know the missing piece of this story now that connects Huber's affidavit with the online trail and explains the sudden shift:
Back in 2003, Sabat spread the rumors of Vic being a pervert pedo into little boys and little girls not just among the Funimation crew, but everywhere he went. Especially to constaff. He consistently badmouthed Vic and spread those hateful ideas about Vic not as accusations but as gossip. You know, "that fag's in such deep denial he's speaking Egyptian", "you can just tell looking at him he touches little boys any time he can" "word of advice, don't let any of the young girls alone with him, you know how those 'christians' are." "He's so damn narcissistic he has sex with anyone who's dressed up like his characters - oh yeah, any of 'em, it's disgusting" etc.
The convention scene being what it was at the time, that got around, mutating as rumors do, so that many staff who had reason to dislike him otherwise (like him being too demanding, or snapping at them) began to just 'know' that's the kind of guest he was. (Coincidentally, Jen randomly go a hate-on for Vic starting in 2004, the first of her insane stories is set then) - This means that people who were close to the staff, or Younique who happened to get in too close proximity to Manjaw, also got the tip-off that "oh he's creepy, watch out" but it wasn't common knowledge because....it's literally just gossip without even a tiny iota of truth to it, and Vic is wildly popular, even more so back then.
Fujoshi Armageddon strikes. Vic's overall reputation takes a comparatively sharp dip, as the fujoshi go from loving him for their boylove fantasies to hating him for not wanting to pretend Ed banged his brother. I believe from 2011 on to when it hit critical mass i n 2014, the seething constaff took the opportunity to share with a group of congoers who now wouldn't question the oh so totally true gossip their mutated versions of how they heard horror stories from their friend who worked in a different con that a past conrunner had to tear a child out of Vic's arms to protect them.
I say this because there is no support for the claim that "People have known for over a decade" back in 2014 when we look at public-facing information. If we include the missing piece given to us in Huber's affidavit, though, the timeline fits perfectly, and also explains why many people like Younique fall back on 'staff told me long ago to avoid him', rather than actually having their own stories. Not only does the timeline fit, but the reasoning for their behavior fits as well, as there's no longer a question of what inspired the jump from homophobic rage to pedo creep in 2014 when the fujos were already angry for a solid 3-5 years before then without jumping to that except in vague, isolated contexts (all post 2010).
My tl;dr of the rambling:
Vic's sex creep defamation and rumors follow this path-
Sabat -> Constaff -> Volunteers/friends -> Tumblr in 2014 -> Hanleia -> Sabat -> Monica -> Funimation -> CA -> ANN -> Twitter in 2019
Basically, Sabat started the rumors, and then went back and used them as an excuse to get Vic removed much later when the rumors failed to do so on their own. That's my current theory boiled down.
TFS seems to like Vic. At least the main group of them do. If you go back to some of their older hours and hours long streams, especially their Nuzlocke ones before they cut out the endless boring grinding, they talked quite a bit. Their honest opinions of him were that they briefly experienced the 'diva' behavior on their first convention with him, as he was utterly bewilderred over why TFS had a bigger room than him, but that he quickly warmed up to them once he understood what was happening. If you go digging deep in their twitters you'll find that they all had consistently positive things to say about Vic over the years that included personal and professional interaction with him. When kickvic happened, they stayed pretty milquetoast about it and mostly said they wouldn't talk about it until the court case was over. My take remains the same as it's been for the past year, They're in too precarious a professional position to support Vic, but they know their supporters will eat them alive if they go so far as to openly attack him.
Incidentally, I notice that they chose to end DBZA and switch to something safe from Toei during this whole scandal. They gave excuses, but as I observed in the past, if Funimation went down in flames, or even Sabat, Toei would immediately devour them. Dropping DBZA protects them from that possibility, and keeps them from being strapped over a barrel due to a lawsuit that has nothing to do with them.
there are many typos in this, but I've been up entirely too long to go back and fix it now.
