By June 2015, my son had been receiving treatment through the Child Trauma Institute for nearly four months. “Bambi” Rattner was the treating psychologist, and Dr. Ricky Greenwald was her supervisor.
The treatment had begun under circumstances that should have demanded particular care. The family court had already spent years examining allegations against me. In its February 10, 2015 order, the court found that those allegations were not supported by the record and directed my son’s father to obtain a qualified trauma therapist. The court also imposed conditions intended to prevent the problems that had affected earlier treatment, including restrictions on interference by the Knutsens, qualified access to therapy records for me, and the possibility that the therapist could recommend and facilitate future contact between my son and me.
The court had stopped the immediate reunification process because of my son’s psychological condition, but it had not authorized the trauma therapist to simply adopt the Knutsens’ account of me. The therapy was supposed to address my son’s trauma within the framework established by the court, using the history and findings the court had already developed.
According to the records later produced, that is not how the treatment began.
Four Months of Treatment Without the Court Order
Dr. Rattner began treating my son on March 2, 2015. Her later testimony showed that she did not recall the February 10 family court order and could not confirm that she had received the court’s written decisions, prior therapy records, or several reports relevant to the history of the case.
Instead, the treatment proceeded while my son was living with Ray and Marilynn Knutsen, the same people whose conduct the family court had expressly addressed when it imposed restrictions on interference with therapy.
By June 2015, Dr. Rattner had already produced a document describing me as an abuser, recommending continued treatment centered on my son’s alleged trauma, and identifying Raymond and Marilynn as his primary attachment figures. The document promoted their continued authority and support while presenting contact with me as a threat to his safety.
Dr. Greenwald was not a distant administrator. He supervised Dr. Rattner’s work and discussed my son’s treatment with her. Her notes and later testimony show that he participated in the clinical reasoning that treated me as a perpetrator whose imprisonment, or permanent removal from my son’s life, might be necessary before my son could feel safe.
All of this occurred before Dr. Greenwald received the family court order from me.
I Sent Him What Raymond Had Withheld
On June 26, 2015, I emailed Dr. Greenwald directly. My son’s father had explicitly forbidden him from speaking with me, so I sent him the family court’s most recent order, along with signed releases authorizing communication. The order made clear that I was to have a defined role in the therapeutic process, not be erased from it entirely.
I wrote:
“As you will read in the order, I am to be specifically included in the trauma therapy, not excluded.”
I also explained that I could not understand how I was supposed to remain involved and informed without access to the records, and I invited Dr. Greenwald to suggest another way forward. I told him that I was open to discussion and expressed my hope that we could work together to help my son heal.
The email gave Dr. Greenwald something he apparently had not previously received: the court’s actual findings and instructions. It also gave him direct notice that Raymond had controlled communication by forbidding him from speaking with me.
That should have been a turning point.
The Moment the Treatment Could Have Changed Course
By the time Dr. Greenwald read my email, he knew that nearly four months of treatment had occurred without the most recent family court order. He knew that my son’s father had forbidden communication with me. He had signed releases allowing that communication, the court’s written findings, and a mother asking to participate rather than obstruct treatment.
The situation called for a pause and a reassessment. At a minimum, the newly received order raised obvious questions about the information Dr. Rattner had been given, the records she had not reviewed, the role Raymond and Marilynn had played in shaping the treatment, and the conclusions already reached about me.
The written exchange does not show Dr. Greenwald asking any of those questions.
He did not arrange an interview with me. He did not request my records or perspective. He did not indicate that he would review the previous investigations, the family court’s findings, or the materials the order directed the therapist to receive. He did not acknowledge that treatment had been conducted for months without the controlling order.
Instead, he defended the course already taken.
Dr. Greenwald Dug In
On June 30, 2015, Dr. Greenwald responded by quoting the portion of the order that gave the trauma therapist discretion to restrict my access to therapy records. He informed me that Dr. Rattner had determined that my access would not be in my son’s best interests and therefore denied my request.
I accepted that answer and immediately asked a narrower question:
“Fair enough, but lets have a conversation as to how I can be involved in the process, as is also described in the order?”
Dr. Greenwald replied that the only involvement he saw in the order was the therapist’s ability to recommend and facilitate contact between my son and me. He then referred to the document Dr. Rattner had recently produced and stated that he did not see such contact happening in the near future.
That response relied on the conclusions reached during the very treatment period that the newly supplied court order should have caused him to examine. The document produced after months of one-sided treatment became the reason not to reconsider the one-sided treatment.
The opportunity to correct course was gone almost as soon as it appeared.
The Court Order Became a Tool for Exclusion
The order gave the therapist discretion over my access to records, but that discretion did not erase the rest of the order. It did not eliminate the court’s findings that the allegations against me lacked support. It did not authorize the Knutsens to control the narrative presented in therapy. It did not excuse the failure to obtain the court decisions and prior professional records that were supposed to inform treatment.
Yet Dr. Greenwald focused on the provision that permitted Dr. Rattner to withhold records while disregarding the larger problem my email exposed: the treatment had already proceeded for months without the court order, without my participation, and apparently without critical parts of the documented history.
The same process that was supposed to preserve a path toward safe future contact instead produced a new professional document reinforcing the allegations the family court had rejected.
Additional reports followed. Police and DCF were contacted again. Previously investigated allegations were revived through a new therapeutic record, and the possibility of restoring my relationship with my son moved even further away.
What Dr. Rattner Later Testified
When Dr. Rattner testified in 2017, she “did not recall” a February 10, 2015 family court order. She could not confirm that she had received all of the court’s written decisions, and the records produced in response to a subpoena reportedly contained no family court order at all.
She also testified that she did not believe she had reviewed several earlier treatment records and professional reports.
Nevertheless, Bambi Rattner had treated my son’s allegations as trauma memories, identified me as a perpetrator, and made recommendations affecting whether I would ever see him again.
Her testimony confirmed the problem my June 2015 email had already placed directly in front of Dr. Greenwald. The treatment had been shaped without the complete record, while the professionals involved heard from the household in which my son lived and excluded me from any meaningful opportunity to respond.
The Massachusetts Board Investigated
As a result, the work of Dr. Greenwald and Dr. Rattner in my son’s case became the subject of an investigation by the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Psychologists.
Both psychologists entered into public Consent Agreements effective June 26, 2018. The agreements were not admissions of misconduct. They acknowledged that, if the matters proceeded to hearings, the Board could make specified findings.
According to Dr. Greenwald’s Consent Agreement, the Board alleged that he assumed a child custody evaluator role despite conflicts that impaired his impartiality and effectiveness, failed to address conflicts of interest, reinforced a false trauma while failing to address actual trauma, conducted or supervised inadequate evaluations, relied on misinterpreted assessment results, and violated multiple provisions of the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct.
His license was placed on probation for three years.
The Record Shows the Turning Point
For years, I remembered the broad outline: I was excluded, Dr. Greenwald would not meaningfully engage with me, and the treatment pushed the case further away from any possibility of restoring my relationship with my son.
The archived emails show something more precise.
They show the exact moment when Dr. Greenwald received information that should have disrupted the framework under which the treatment had been conducted. He learned that Raymond had forbidden communication with me. He received the missing court order. He received releases authorizing him to speak with me. He received a direct request to discuss how I could participate.
He could have paused. He could have reviewed the history. He could have asked why the treatment had begun without the order. He could have examined whether the conclusions reached during the previous four months were consistent with the family court’s findings and restrictions.
The emails show no such reassessment. Instead, Dr. Greenwald relied on the work already produced to justify continuing the same course.
Looking Back
The central question is no longer simply why I was excluded.
It is what Dr. Greenwald did after the reason for that exclusion was placed directly in front of him.
When a psychologist learns that one parent has forbidden communication with the other, receives the controlling court order and signed releases, and discovers that months of treatment have already occurred without that order, why would he defend the existing process instead of stopping to determine whether it had gone wrong?
Readers can examine the family court order, the email exchange, the treatment records, the later testimony, and the Massachusetts Consent Agreement for themselves.
The written record shows where the case could have changed course. It also shows that it did not.
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