The Other Side of the Story: Dr. Steve Tutty and the Anatomy of a Hit Piece
Charges against a forensic psychologist are allegations, not findings. We examine what the record actually shows — and why custody evaluators so often become targets of the losing side.
Recent coverage has amplified state allegations against Dr. Steve Tutty, a clinical and forensic psychologist who spent more than 25 years evaluating children and families in Washington court cases. The reporting leans heavily on a single document: a Statement of Charges from the Department of Health’s Examining Board of Psychology.
What the coverage consistently fails to explain is what that document is — and what it is not.
A Statement of Charges Is an Accusation, Not a Verdict
A Statement of Charges opens a process. It is the regulatory equivalent of a prosecutor’s filing: one side’s account, untested by cross-examination. It is not a finding of fact, not a judgment, and not proof that anything improper occurred. Tutty is entitled to contest every allegation in it, and the process includes exactly that opportunity.
Tutty maintains that his evaluation work followed Washington law and professional standards at every step. That position — his side — was largely absent from the coverage.
The Custody-Evaluation Trap
Anyone familiar with family court knows the structural problem: a custody evaluator’s job is to give an honest, independent professional opinion, and in every case there is at least one party who dislikes the outcome. Parents — fathers and mothers alike — who do not get the recommendation they wanted are frequently angry, and complaints to licensing boards have become a standard form of retaliation in high-conflict disputes.
The result is an open secret in the field: the most experienced evaluators accumulate complaints precisely because they do the work honestly and often. A complaint count is not evidence of misconduct; it is evidence of exposure. Evaluators who bend their opinions to please the paying parent rarely get complained about. Evaluators who don’t, do.
Tutty has been blunt about this dynamic. Writing about his departure from divorce work, he described “firing squad depositions” and “brutal cross examinations,” and observed that for mental health professionals in family court, “you are literally walking into a mine field, blindfolded, at night.” He concluded that best-interest determinations belong with judges — and that divorce litigation offers “zero protection for the mental health profession.”
The Kaiser Matter, In Context
The coverage also reaches back to a 2021–2022 billing dispute tied to Tutty’s former contract with Kaiser Permanente. The details matter: when claims were denied over administrative paperwork errors — incorrect tax ID numbers, missing signatures — the dispute concerned billing administration, not clinical care. The matter was resolved through an informal disposition in January 2022, a process Washington uses for cases that do not warrant formal discipline, with $4,000 in costs and practice audits. State records show he was subsequently released from that agreement after completing its terms. That is an administrative settlement, closed and done — not a finding that any patient was harmed or any evaluation was corrupted.
What the Hit Pieces Leave Out
The articles omit Tutty’s actual professional record:
- More than 2,300 children and adolescents evaluated and treated, including complex autism, ADHD, and twice-exceptional profiles
- More than 535 forensic evaluations of adults in personal-injury and traumatic-brain-injury cases
- Peer-reviewed research published in JAMA, the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Behavioral Therapy, General Hospital Psychiatry, and the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics — including a landmark JAMA randomized trial on telephone psychotherapy for depression and research on ADHD interventions in pediatric settings
- A National Health Scholar background spanning hospitals, schools, wilderness programs, universities, and research institutions
This is not the résumé of a careless practitioner. It is the résumé of a scientist-practitioner whose honest opinions made him enemies in exactly the way family-court insiders would predict.
Our Position
Allegations deserve scrutiny — but scrutiny applies in both directions. When coverage treats an untested Statement of Charges as established fact, dwells on a closed administrative settlement, and ignores a quarter-century of peer-reviewed, court-trusted work, that is not reporting. That is a hit piece, built from the grievances of disgruntled litigants who lost.
Dr. Tutty deserves what the process already promises him: the presumption that allegations are allegations until proven otherwise.