Removing chat set a terrible precedent for the game, makes a terrible image for the game, and has sewn a lot of player mistrust in the dev team.
People requesting chat be removed and/or complaining about toxicity fall within a vocal minority of an already small section of a small playerbase.
Toxicity and harassment happen. I'm not saying its right, I'm not saying people need to toughen up, but there are a lot of avenues to address the issue and what we got, simply put, was not just the wrong decision, it was poor one.