Timothy Busfield to be released from jail as he awaits trial on child sexual abuse charges

Timothy Busfield was ordered by a New Mexico judge on Tuesday to be released from jail as he awaits trial on child sexual abuse charges alleging the 68-year-old Emmy-winning actor and director abused 11-year-old twin boys on a film set.

Busfield turned himself in to authorities in New Mexico last week after an arrest warrant was issued by the Albuquerque Police Department. He was booked into jail on two counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor and one count of child abuse. He has denied the charges.

Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit with his hands and feet shackled, Busfield took his seat at the defense table for the detention hearing. His wife, actress Melissa Gilbert, was seated in the courtroom gallery.

After hearing two hours of arguments, Judge David Murphy denied the motion and ruled that Busfield be released on his own recognizance. Gilbert cried as the judge delivered his verdict, mouthing the words “Thank God” from her seat.

Murphy informed Busfield of the conditions of his release, including no alcohol or illegal drugs, no contact with witnesses, and no unsupervised contact with any children or minors. The judge did not place any travel restrictions on Busfield, who lives in New York.

Prosecutors had sought to keep Busfield in custody through trial, arguing that he poses “an ongoing and serious danger to children and the community.” In a pretrial motion filed by the Bernalillo County district attorney’s office, they cited Busfield’s alleged history of “sexual misconduct, abuse of authority, and grooming behavior” in seeking his detention.

In a 237-page court filing, Busfield’s attorneys claimed that the mother of the twin boys, who were child actors, sought revenge against the director because they were replaced during filming. They argued that Busfield passed an independently administered polygraph test and that “an adult psychosexual evaluation” concluded that Busfield “does not appear to have a sexual attraction to prepubescent or adolescent males or females.”

The defense filing included dozens of character letters to the judge in support of Busfield from friends and family members, including Gilbert, who had yet to speak publicly since the criminal allegations against him surfaced.

“Tim Busfield is my love, my rock, my partner in business and life,” Gilbert wrote. “I know Tim better and more intimately than anyone in his life ever has. Conversely, he knows me in the same way. Tim has the strongest moral compass of any human I have ever known.

“I only want this extraordinary man safe and whole,” she added. “Please, please take care of my sweet husband. As he is my protector, I am his, but I cannot protect him now and I think that, more than anything else, is what is truly breaking my heart. I am relying on you to protect him for me.”

Busfield is best known for his TV roles on The West Wing and Thirtysomething and in the movie Field of Dreams. He has been married to Gilbert, who starred in Little House on the Prairie, since 2013.

What are the allegations against Busfield?

According to the criminal complaint, an investigation into Busfield began in November 2024 when a doctor at the University of New Mexico Hospital alerted police about suspected sexual abuse of the twin boys. The minors are not identified in court documents.

The alleged abuse occurred on the set of The Cleaning Lady, a now canceled TV drama Busfield directed and acted in, between 2022 and 2024. According to the complaint, Busfield would tell the boys to call him “Uncle Tim.”

When the mother of the boys asked if anyone had ever touched them in a manner that made them feel uncomfortable, the children responded by asking, “You mean like Uncle Tim?”

At the time of the initial investigation, in November 2024, the boys said that Busfield would tickle them but did not disclose any sexual contact, and police determined that the case did not meet their “acceptance criteria.”

In October 2025, the mother reported to Child Protective Services that both of her children disclosed that they had been sexually abused by Busfield.

One of the children told a forensic child interviewer that the alleged abuse first occurred when he was 7 years old. The child said that Busfield touched him five or six times over his clothing in his “poop” and “pee” area.

The child described a similar incident when he was 8 years old, in which Busfield touched him in the same areas over his clothing three or four times. He said he “was afraid to tell anyone because Tim was the director, and he feared Tim would get mad at him,” the complaint states.

According to the complaint, the boy previously told a therapist he was “having nightmares about the director touching him and waking up scared.” The boy “also disclosed that the director had touched and rubbed his penis 3 or 4 times and appeared to be ashamed.”

The other boy told the forensic child interviewer that Busfield “started touching them for the first two years” they were on set. The boy said the touching occurred as they were filming in the “house” and that “he did not like being touched but did not say anything because he did not want to get in trouble.”

According to the complaint, attorneys for Warner Bros. Television, which produced The Cleaning Lady, told police that in February 2025, the studio conducted an independent investigation into allegations that Busfield kissed a minor male actor on the face in a makeup trailer but could not find evidence to support the claims.

What did Busfield tell police?

Busfield denied the allegations when he spoke with investigators in November 2025.

During a phone interview with police, Busfield was asked “if he ever had any physical contact with these boys and if he ever picked them up and tickled them.”

He said it was “highly likely” because, as a director, he wanted to foster a “playful environment.”

“I don’t remember it,” Busfield said, according to the complaint. “If it happened, I don’t remember overtly tickling the boys ever, but it wouldn’t be uncommon for me.”

Busfield and Gilbert told police that they had “a relationship with the alleged victims and their family outside of work.” The couple “advised that they did buy the two boys Christmas gifts and were together on several social functions,” according to the complaint.

Busfield said that the boys were eventually replaced by another child actor on the show and that he was told by another actor that their mother “wanted revenge” on him for not bringing her kids back for the final season.

Albuquerque Police Officer Marvin Brown, who investigated the claims, concluded that Busfield used his position as a director to commit the alleged crimes.

“In my training and experience, pedophiles often infiltrate families under a trusted role, like Timothy, who, as a producer, exploited the hectic film sets to tickle and touch [the boy] on his penis and buttocks, masking it as play,” Brown wrote in a conclusion to the complaint attached to the arrest warrant.

“He would invite the family to off-set gatherings, with his wife buying Christmas gifts to foster closeness, making [the boy] feel special and dependent — classic grooming to erode boundaries, isolate the victim, and silence suspicions by blending abuse into normalcy,” Brown continued. “This dual tactic, charming parents while secretly violating the child, builds a web of complicity that is hard to unravel, delaying detection, as families trust the abuser’s facade.”

New abuse claims presented in court

The pretrial motion filed by prosecutors outlined other allegations of sexual abuse against Busfield, including a new accusation from the parents of a 16-year-old girl. The alleged incident occurred “several years ago” at B Street Theatre in Sacramento, Calif., according to the filing.

“While auditioning for [Busfield] at B Street Theatre, the 16-year-old reported that [Busfield] kissed her and put his hands down her pants and touched her privates,” the newly filed motion alleges. Busfield founded B Street Theatre, originally called Theatre for Children, in 1986.

The actor “begged the family” to hold off on reporting the alleged incident to police “if he received therapy,” and the girl’s father, who is a therapist, agreed, according to the filing.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Bernalillo County Deputy District Attorney Savannah Brandenburg-Koch cited another new allegation from Claudia Christian, an actress who reported that when she was running lines with Busfield in his trailer on the set of the 1991 film Strays, he forcibly grabbed her, threw her against a wall and started kissing her.

Brandenburg-Koch said that Christian ran out of the trailer and told an assistant director, who kept Busfield away from her for the remainder of the filming.

Busfield has not been charged in relation to either of the new allegations, and a representative for the actor did not respond to a request for comment.

What else has Busfield said about the charges?

Busfield made his first court appearance last week via video from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Bernalillo County, where he is being held without bail. He did not enter a plea.

In a video taken at his lawyer’s office shortly before he turned himself in on Jan. 13, Busfield said he drove 2,000 miles to Albuquerque to “confront these lies.”

“I’m sure most of you know, that are watching this, that I was ordered to come to Albuquerque — I’m here now,” he said in the video, which was published by TMZ. “I got the call Friday night. I had to get a lawyer. Saturday, I got in the car and drove 2,000 miles to Albuquerque.

“They’re all lies, and I did not do anything to those little boys, and I’m gonna fight it,” Busfield continued. “I’m gonna be exonerated, I know I am, because this is all so wrong.”

In the wake of the allegations, Deadline reported that Busfield was edited out of You Deserve Each Other, an upcoming romantic comedy from Amazon MGM Studios. And according to Variety, an upcoming episode of Law & Order: SVU in which Busfield appeared as a guest star has been shelved.