My opinion:
VC doesn't require a fighting agreement or pact, but instead recognizes peace agreements. In in-game chat, request a peace agreement or "no-kill" and make sure the other person agrees, then a pact is made (by default for several minutes) and we can see it in the server logs, and the Staff will enforce it should it be broken. Please see Rule 12 for that.
Otherwise what we're dealing with here is Rule 10, which is combat in PVP-On zones, which is allowed.
In my opinion no rule was broken in this instance.
Sorry you lost some items, consider privately talking to CRH to see if he'd be interested in returning anything, tho it's up to him. And in the future, consider using peace agreements to keep the peace in PVP zones.
Also, I wanted to add that Legend pointed out to me today that VC used to be very PVP-focused, but isn't all that much at the moment. I think people are a bit out of practice with handling it, probably yourself included. Let this be a lesson to everyone that PVP zones are kinda the wild west.