When psychologist Bambi Rattner appeared in my 2017 civil trial, she was not a defendant and her treatment of my child was not the claim being tried.
I was seeking monetary damages from Raymond Knutsen for what he and his wife had done to me. Rattner appeared as a paid witness for the defense, prepared to give testimony that could undermine my case and help Raymond avoid financial responsibility.
There was one serious problem.
The records needed to examine the foundation of Rattner’s involvement had not been fully produced.
A Paid Witness With Powerful Opinions
Rattner had treated my child and created a written report containing extraordinary conclusions about me. She had never interviewed me, evaluated me, tested me, or reviewed records directly with me.
Nevertheless, her work was used to portray me as the source of severe harm and to support the permanent destruction of my relationship with my child.
By the time she appeared in my civil trial, the defense had failed to disclose her as an expert witness within the required deadline. She therefore testified as a fact witness.
But the substance of her testimony was hardly neutral background information. Rattner was paid to appear for the defense in a trial where Raymond’s monetary liability was at stake. Her testimony gave the defense a psychologist who could repeat damaging claims about me before the jury, even though the case was not a custody proceeding and Rattner was not there as a court-appointed evaluator.
My Attorney Sought the Records
To test the basis of Rattner’s conclusions and testimony, my attorney sought records from the Child Trauma Institute.
The requested production should have shown what materials Rattner received, what information she considered, what services were provided, and what the Institute billed for its work involving my child.
Those records were essential. Rattner’s testimony could affect whether Raymond was held financially responsible. The defense was presenting her work as evidence against me. My attorney was entitled to examine the records behind that work.
Yet when Rattner took the stand, significant records were still missing.
Not One Family Court Order Was Produced
During cross-examination, my attorney asked Rattner whether she remembered his office sending a subpoena to the Child Trauma Institute.
She acknowledged that she did.
Q. Do you recall my office sending a subpoena to the Child Trauma Institute?
A. Yes.
He then identified a remarkable omission from the Institute’s response.
Q. And I’ll report to you, ma’am, that there is not one family court order in the response to my subpoena. Would that surprise you?
The absence of the orders was not a trivial filing problem.
The family court orders documented the history of the dispute, the court’s findings, and the circumstances under which treatment was authorized. They were part of the context necessary to determine what Rattner had been told, what she had reviewed, and whether her later conclusions accounted for the existing judicial record.
When asked how many orders she had received, Rattner could not say.
Q. Did you receive more than one family court order or just one?
A. I don’t recall.
The Institute’s production could not resolve that uncertainty because, according to the testimony, it did not contain a single family court order.
The Billing Records Were Another Dead End
My attorney also questioned Rattner about the billing records connected to the Institute’s work.
Billing mattered because it could establish who requested services, who paid for them, what services were charged, and how the Institute characterized the work being performed.
Rattner distanced herself from those records.
“I don’t do billing, I don’t do intakes, I don’t make copies of files, and I’m not a lawyer.”
That answer did not produce the records or explain their absence.
The Child Trauma Institute had accepted money for work involving my child. Rattner had personally performed the treatment, produced the report, and appeared as a paid defense witness. But when my attorney attempted to examine the administrative and financial trail behind that work, responsibility became fragmented among unnamed people performing separate office functions.
Rattner could testify for the defense about me. She could not account for the billing, intake process, file copying, or completeness of the records produced by the organization through which she performed the work.
“We Sent You the Records That We Had”
Rattner maintained that the Institute had sent the available records.
“Again, we sent you the records that we had.”
That statement raised more questions than it answered.
Had the Institute never retained the court orders? Had Rattner relied on documents that were no longer in the file? Were records withheld, lost, stored elsewhere, or never collected in the first place?
The testimony did not establish the answer.
What it did establish was that the production did not contain records that should have helped my attorney test the basis, scope, and reliability of Rattner’s involvement before she testified against me.
She Could Not Identify the History She Had Reviewed
The gaps became more consequential when my attorney asked Rattner about records created before she entered the case.
She did not believe she had received the prior therapist’s notes. She had heard about a previous psychological evaluation but could not say whether she had seen it. She did not believe she possessed the special investigation report. She could not clearly identify the complete collection of court orders she had reviewed.
Q. Did you receive the therapy notes from Tracey Richards?
A. I don’t think so.
Q. Did you receive Dr. Knapp’s report before?
A. Again, I’ve heard about these. I don’t know if I’ve actually seen them.
These documents concerned years of investigations, therapy, psychological evaluation, and litigation surrounding the same allegations Rattner later addressed.
They were exactly the kinds of records that could confirm, contradict, or complicate the narrative the defense wanted the jury to hear.
Rattner could not establish that she had reviewed them.
The Prior History Was Not Important to Her
My attorney then asked the central question.
Q. Well, isn’t it important as a therapist, Dr. Rattner, that you know what’s happened before your involvement in a case?
A. No, because that’s not the type of therapy I do.
Q. So it’s not important to you for you to know what conclusions a prior therapist may have come to with the child that you’re treating?
A. No. It’s not.
That answer exposed the contradiction at the center of her testimony.
Rattner claimed that the prior history was not important to the therapy she provided. Yet she did not confine herself to treating symptoms privately. She produced a report addressing whether abuse had occurred, whether my child had been coached, whether the father and stepmother had influenced him, and whether my child should have contact with me.
She then appeared as a paid witness for Raymond in a civil trial where those conclusions could be used to defeat my request for monetary damages.
She was prepared to offer the defense the benefit of her conclusions. She was not prepared to establish that she had reviewed the records necessary to understand the full history behind them.
The Missing Records Protected the Testimony From Scrutiny
Records are what allow opposing counsel to test a witness.
They reveal what the witness knew, when she knew it, who supplied the information, what competing information was available, who paid for the services, and whether the witness’s testimony is consistent with the contemporaneous file.
Without a complete production, my attorney was forced to cross-examine Rattner through the gaps.
The missing court orders limited his ability to establish precisely what judicial findings she had received or disregarded. The absent billing material obscured the financial and administrative history of the Institute’s involvement. The missing treatment and investigative records made it harder to compare her conclusions with the professionals and agencies who had examined the allegations before her.
That incompleteness did not prevent Rattner from testifying.
It prevented the foundation of her testimony from being fully examined.
This Was Not a Custody Trial
The distinction matters.
Rattner did not appear in a proceeding to determine the best interests of my child. She appeared for the defense in my civil lawsuit against Raymond.
Money was at stake.
The defense had a direct interest in convincing the jury that Raymond had not wrongfully caused the destruction of my relationship with my child, or that I had not suffered compensable harm because of his actions.
Rattner’s testimony served that purpose. Her conclusions gave the defense a way to redirect attention away from Raymond’s conduct and back onto allegations about me.
The testimony was damaging. The records required to fully test it were incomplete.
What the Trial Record Shows
The trial record does not establish why every document was absent. It does not identify who assembled the Institute’s production or assign personal responsibility for every missing item.
It establishes something more basic:
- My attorney formally sought the Child Trauma Institute’s records.
- The response contained no family court orders.
- Rattner could not recall which orders she received.
- She could not confirm that she reviewed several major prior records.
- She disclaimed responsibility for billing, intake, copying, and other administrative records.
- She nevertheless testified as a paid defense witness in a civil trial involving Raymond’s potential monetary liability.
The defense received the benefit of her testimony.
My attorney never received the complete documentary foundation needed to examine it.
Read the Testimony
This is not a claim that every missing document was deliberately concealed. The public record does not establish that.
It is the documented account of a paid defense witness offering damaging testimony while the records behind her involvement remained incomplete, unidentified, or unavailable.
Rattner’s testimony helped the defense tell the jury a story about me.
The missing records made it much harder for my attorney to show the jury the whole story.
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