After a week in custody, actor Timothy Busfield was ordered to be released from an Albuquerque, New Mexico jail on Tuesday after being arrested on charges of child sex abuse.
The former West Wing actor is accused of criminal sexual contact of a minor and child abuse related to twin child actors he worked with on the Fox television series The Cleaning Lady, according to an arrest warrant from earlier this month. Busfield has denied the accusations, describing them as “horrible lies.”
Throughout Tuesday’s two-hour hearing Busfield appeared to be in a daze, blankly staring at the attorneys making their cases in front of New Mexico Judge David Murphy at the podium. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit and shackled at his hands and feet, the 68-year-old seemed relieved when the judge granted his release. Busfield’s wife, Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert, broke out into tears upon the news, mouthing a prayer to the ceiling.
“I’ll characterize the weight of the evidence against the defendant as neutral at this point in time,” Judge Murphy said, instructing Busfield to have no contact with the accusers but permitting him to travel out of the state.
Albuquerque officials launched an investigation into Busfield in November 2024 over concerns the child actors were possibly “groomed” by Busfield, who served as an executive producer and a director for The Cleaning Lady, which ran for four seasons. The boys said they referred to Busfield as “Uncle Tim” and claimed the Hollywood veteran pestered them with unwanted tickles. Later, one of the children claimed that Busfield began touching his private areas over his clothes while on set.
Tuesday’s hearing was centered on whether Busfield should be detained ahead of a trial, as Albuquerque prosecutors said it was standard procedure in cases of child sexual abuse for defendants to be held in custody due to the serious nature of the allegations.
“When it comes to conditions of release, this Court can’t set any conditions that is going to protect any other child, any other victim, any other witness from reporting or continuing reporting,” Deputy District Attorney Savannah Brandenburg-Koch argued. “The court can’t set conditions to secure that. There is no way anyone can monitor that behavior, and what we know is a defendant has a history [of sexual misconduct accusations,] and that’s what the court should consider.”
In previously submitted court documents, officials alleged Busfield “has a documented pattern of sexual misconduct, abuse of authority, and grooming behavior.” A new alleged incident came to light after news that Busfield was wanted for arrest. A father contacted law enforcement, claiming Busfield sexually assaulted his 16-year-old daughter “several years ago” when the teen was auditioning for the actor at his B Street Theatre in Sacramento, California.
But Judge Murphy acknowledged that “given the lack of a pattern involving children in this case, I think that can be remedied through different conditions of release.”
Busfield’s attorneys successfully argued their client has the presumption of innocence and described the state’s evidence as uncredible, misconstrued, and contradictory. Defense attorneys brought The Cleaning Lady’s director of photography, Alan Caudillo, to testify that Caudillo had never seen Busfield act inappropriately with the boys on set.
They labeled the young boys’ parents as “con artists” and suggested they led their sons to make “manufactured allegations” against Busfield as revenge for replacing their sons on the show with a younger actor. “There’s not a universe that [prosecutors] could prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt — it’s impossible,” Busfield’s defense attorney Amber Fayerberg said.
Last week, lawyers for Busfield submitted a 237-page opposition filing in response to the charges, demanding Busfield’s release from jail. They argued that Busfield recently passed a polygraph test regarding the accusation, and that a Warner Bros. independent investigation was unable to substantiate the claims. They submitted 87 letters of support from Busfield’s family and loved ones, and a copy of an adult psychosexual evaluation that deemed Busfield as being “very low risk” and noted he “does not appear to have a sexual attraction to prepubescent or adolescent males or females.”
