This profile is part of "The Record Stands," a TROH special series.
In family court, the pressure on a psychologist is almost always the same pressure: say the thing that gets this case to a signature. Parents want timelines. Attorneys want milestones. Judges want orders that hold. Everyone in the building is paid to move the file.
The documented record shows Dr. Steve Tutty saying something that moves no file at all. On reunification after estrangement, his position is that trust, not court orders, rebuilds parent-child relationships. And he adds a condition that slows everything down further: allegations of abuse or neglect "require careful evaluation" before reunification is even discussed.
Neither half of that position is convenient. Together they form a stance that frustrates every party in turn, which is usually the signature of an honest one.
What the Position Actually Claims
Take the first half. A court can order a schedule. It can order exchanges, overnights, holidays, phone calls. What it cannot order is a child's willingness to be in the room. Estrangement is not a logistics problem. A child who has become distant from a parent, whatever the cause, does not reconnect because a document says Tuesday at six. The reconnection happens, when it happens, at the speed of trust, and trust has its own metabolism that no bench can hurry.
Tutty has written the principle in its general form: "Trust is the foundation of every relationship," he says, "and without it, there is no depth, connection, respect, or understanding."
Apply that to a reunification case and the implications get uncomfortable fast. If trust is the foundation, then the work is not enforcing contact. The work is rebuilding the ground contact stands on. That can mean starting smaller than either parent wants. It can mean progress measured in a child's posture, not in overnight counts. It means telling a court that the order is the easy part and the relationship is the hard part, and that confusing the two can actually set the family back, because forced contact without trust can harden a child's resistance rather than melt it.
The Second Half Is the Brave Half
Now the condition. Before reunification is even discussed, allegations of abuse or neglect require careful evaluation.
Understand who that sentence disappoints. It disappoints the parent who believes the allegations are fabricated as a custody weapon, because it refuses to wave the claims away. It disappoints the parent raising the allegations, because it insists on evaluation rather than automatic acceptance. It disappoints the attorneys who wanted a fast recommendation, and it takes time that everyone is billing against.
In other words, it does exactly what a neutral professional position is supposed to do. It treats child safety as a precondition rather than a variable. Nobody gets to skip that step, and no desired outcome justifies shrinking it.
Consider what that precondition asks of everyone involved. Careful evaluation means the allegations get examined on the evidence before anyone talks about schedules. It means a parent who has raised a genuine concern gets that concern taken seriously enough to be tested, and a parent facing a false or distorted claim gets a process capable of finding that too. Both outcomes require the same thing: patience, method, and a professional willing to absorb the frustration of adults who wanted a faster answer. The child at the center of the case gets the one thing family court owes every child, which is a decision built on what actually happened.
There is a reason this stance takes courage in practice. Family court runs on pressure, and the evaluator is the softest target in the room. The parent whose plan is delayed blames the evaluator personally. The accusations travel. The complaints follow. A clinician who wanted an easy life would learn to give the room what it wants. The documented position here does the opposite: it tells the room the room is wrong, and it does so on the record, in public writing, where anyone can quote it back.
The Pattern Behind the Position
Step back and the position fits a larger documented pattern. This is the clinician who says that in court-ordered work, "our client is actually the judge and/or commissioner," meaning the opinion belongs to the truth of the assessment rather than the party paying for it. It is the clinician who built a career of more than 2,300 child and adolescent evaluations by starting with the child rather than the dispute. The reunification stance is the same posture applied to the hardest question in family law: what do you do when a parent and child have lost each other?
His answer, documented and consistent, is that you rebuild trust carefully and you investigate safety first, and you accept that this answer will make both sides impatient. A court order can schedule a reunion. It cannot manufacture one. The distinction sounds obvious in print and gets punished in practice, which is why it is worth saying out loud that he kept saying it.
Why We Are Printing This Now
The recent coverage of Dr. Tutty has been built from a Statement of Charges, a document that opens a regulatory process and contains allegations, not findings. He maintains his work followed Washington law and professional standards, and the process exists to test exactly that. We will let it.
What we will not let stand is a portrait of this career that omits the actual clinical philosophy on the record. Here is a psychologist whose published advice to estranged families is: slow down, protect the child, investigate the allegations fully, and rebuild trust at the speed trust actually moves. That is the advice of someone answering to the child's interest above the case calendar.
Families estranged from each other are in genuine pain, and they deserve to know what careful looks like. Careful looks like trust before orders, and safety before everything. It says so right there in his own words, and it has for years. The critics quoting him selectively are hoping you never read the part where he tells parents what they least want to hear. Now you have.