Pamela Sutherland

Pam Sutherland grew up in suburban Washington, DC. One of her first jobs, at age 16, was canvassing in rural Virginia for the National Women’s Political Caucus to get voters to elect state legislators who would vote to ratify the ERA. She has been involved in politics ever since. Pam worked on the national campaigns of John Anderson and Gary Hart in college. Upon leaving college in 1984, she did field work for SANE (Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy) in Washington, DC and was moved up to Boston to be the office manager of that office.

In 1990, Pam graduated from law school in Boston and began practicing feminist law. She represented women who had been sexually exploited by a trusted professional, such as a psychiatrist or lawyer. At the time she first started working in this area of law, the courts were still of the opinion that no harm was caused to a woman by having sex with her doctor. Pam worked on cases nationally, and was admitted to practice pro hac vice in North Carolina, New Hampshire, New York, Maine, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. She was involved in several precedent-setting decisions, including Palermo v. Brennan, a 1996 Massachusetts appeals court case which recognized a patient’s inability to understand the harm caused by her psychiatrist’s abuse of her trust, and so tolled the statute of limitations until the patient was able to understand it. During this period, she wrote and co-wrote a number of articles and co-wrote a book published by Michie Publishing, Sexual Abuse by Professionals: A Legal Guide. She spoke on this topic before the American Bar Association’s annual meeting and at the annual meetings of the American Psychological Association and other groups.

In 1998, Pam and her husband moved to Tucson. She has been the campaign manager of a mayoral race and a Congressional race; she has served on the campaign and finance committees of numerous candidates for federal, state and local election. She has served on the boards of several non-profit organizations and has helped them raise thousands of dollars, including the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault, American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, and Access Tucson. In 2001, Pam became the legal director for the ACLU of Arizona. She left that position at the end of December 2003 to become the Executive Director of Arizona List, and is now doing economic development work.