Okay, I gotta push back on this, because it is not remotely what happened.
In the initial 2014 release of the PHB, RPGPundit and Zak S. were listed as consultants. At the time, Zak S had not been accused by anybody of sexual abuse. He was at the time a well-known and ENnie-winning RPG writer. He was known for being abrasive online, and had been banned from several forums, and some people accused him of instigating online harassment of those who disagreed with him. But in response to positive reaction to trans and LGBT+ inclusive language in the PHB, some said WotC should not get credit for such language when they had used homo/transphobic people like RPGPundit and Zak S as consultants.
Mearls said that "If anyone has any direct evidence of racism or sexism or any other form of discrimination on the part of people attached to D&D, please drop a line to me." It is not known what he did internally with such emails, whether he sent them to PR or HR (HR is unlikely, since Zak was not an employee of WotC), or anything. All we know is that he reported that people described harassment and marginalization, but he had not received evidence of Zak S using slurs: "I haven’t seen or received any evidence that Zak has made homo/transphobic or racist statements. I have heard from a number of people who feel harassed and marginalized in the gaming community. At the end of the day, the responsibility for working with Zak and RPGPundit, and more importantly not directly working with marginalized groups falls solely upon me"
Zak portrayed this as exoneration, despite the fact that Mearls' response indicated it was unlikely that WotC would work with him again. Some people questioned whether Mearls had shared the emails he had received with Zak. Mearls said that he had not. One person said that the burner account they had used to contact Mearls was now receiving harassment. It was then widely assumed and repeated that Mearls had forwarded the emails to Zak.
In 2019, Zak's longtime girlfriend accused him of sexual and emotional abuse. WotC then immediately removed his name from new printings and digital versions of the PHB, and put out a statement saying it regretted ever working with him.
Whether one believes that Mearls forwarded emails or not, (I personally can conceive of various other possibilities) his inquiry was about discriminatory statements, not about online harassment, and certainly not about sexual abuse, which was not known by anyone until five years later. And inasmuch as, at the time, how WotC would address possible discriminatory statements (e.g., not work with him again and/or remove his name from the credits) was Mearls' call as the head of the D&D division, it certainly was not outside his rubric to review the claims against Zak of such statements.
www.enworld.org
