Hi Marie -
Given the fact that you're talking about men's rights activists, by Sarah, I assume you mean Sarah Stierch? Both Sarah and myself (we were some of the earlier Wikipedians to really infuriate MRA's) suffered a good bit of harassment at various points as a result of our engagement with them. We're definitely far from the only people to have experienced harassment by MRA's or various other groups, and both myself, Sarah, and a large number of other contributors have experienced at least some harassment severe enough that I've thought for some time that the Wikimedia Foundation should attempt to create some sort of contributor support system (as was most recently brought up as an idea by Lane Raspberry of WP:MED.) None of it was at all fun for me to handle, and some of it took significant labor to deal with - both emotional labor and labor as in actually having to explain to targeted associates of mine the back story behind the calls and emails they were getting - and I have significant systemic privilege that makes the same set of situations much easier and less threatening to deal with than many other people do. I agree that harassment of contributors, by fringe elements of the men's rights movement as well as other fringe groups is a serious problem and that both the Wikimedia movement and the Wikimedia Foundation need to come up with a better way of triaging and minimizing the harm that it causes our contributors.
That said, I do want to be clear in saying that Sarah, to the best of my knowledge, has never been suspended from a position of any sort for making off-wiki comments. She was a moderator of this list for quite some time, but eventually stepped down because this can at times be a very very very very draining list to moderate - if she ever wanted to become a mod again here, I'd give her a mod bit back in a heart beat, but I really doubt she will ever want to again. She's still an active contributor (and administrator) on the English Wikipedia, and still hosts talks and editathons about our movement's demographic gaps pretty regularly. She does no longer work for the WMF, but the fact that she no longer works there isn't a result of her political views or offsite comments, and a great number of current WMF staffers still have tremendous respect for her.
I was near the pre-scheduled end-date of an internship at the Wikimedia Foundation right around the time that Sarah and I riled up men's rights activists for the first time (it's been a number of years at this point) through making the article about their movement more in compliance with ENWP's encyclopedic content policies than it previously had been. It was definitely an issue that came up with me in the office that week (partly because it had made Jezebel; partly because people were contacting the office,) and I will say that I don't think I can fault the behavior of a single WMF staff member regarding the situation. They were tremendously more accomodating than I can imagine most other workplaces being in such circumstances - the rest of my time there included a large number of people repeatedly making sure that I was doing okay/checking if I needed anything/thanking me for publicly standing up for what I thought was right.
I don't want to dissect past situations in great detail, but I do think the mod team has made significant errors in how we've chosen to moderate the list in the past (and I accept a plurality if not an outright majority of blame for that,) that was significantly detrimental to fostering a free, open, and safe environment where conversations related to the purpose of the list could occur. We can't change the past, but hopefully we'll be able to help guide the list in a more beneficial direction in the future.
Best,
Kevin Gorman