Four days after Timothy Busfield was accused of child sex abuse, the Albuquerque Police Department asked the U.S. Marshals Service for help in locating the West Wing actor.
“We are working with the U.S. Marshals Service to get Mr. Busfield into custody. That is simply because we believe he is outside the state of New Mexico,” a spokesperson for the police department tells Rolling Stone.
A New Mexico judge signed off on a 13-page arrest warrant for Busfield on Friday. The 68-year-old is charged with two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor and one count of child abuse related to twin child actors he worked with on the FOX television series, The Cleaning Lady. (Rolling Stone has contacted a representative for Busfield for comment.)
An investigation into the Emmy Award-winning actor and director was launched in November 2024 when police were called to the University of New Mexico Hospital over concern that two young boys were possibly “groomed” by Busfield. The boys referred to Busfield, who served as executive producer and a director for the show, as “Uncle Tim” and described unwanted tickling.
The incidents allegedly began occurring when the children, identified only by their initials in the arrest warrant, were around seven years old. At the time, neither child disclosed any sexual contact, and no further action was taken.
But by October 2025, the boys’ mother called Child Protective Services, stating “her children both disclosed that there was sexual abuse by Timothy from around November 2022 to Spring 2024,” according to the arrest warrant obtained by Rolling Stone.
Officials subsequently obtained therapist records where one of the boys disclosed “that a director of a series … had engaged in inappropriate touching.” Diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety, the child was so distraught that he was having “nightmares about the director touching him and waking up scared,” according to the warrant.
In interviews with officials, one of the boys claimed Busfield had repeatedly touched his private areas over his clothes while filming the show. The boy said he “was afraid to tell anyone because Tim was the Director, and he feared Tim would get mad at him.”
Investigators noted they interviewed Busfield and his wife, Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert over speakerphone in November 2025. Busfield acknowledged there was a “playful environment” on set and that parent company Warner Bros. investigated a similar complaint against him, but the claims couldn’t be substantiated.
Busfield told officials the accusations were “revenge” for The Cleaning Lady replacing the child actors with a younger actor in the series. “There would never be a weird moment about it. I don’t really remember picking those boys up,” Busfield told investigators, according to the warrant. “I remember picking up the boy who followed them. I’d pick him up, and he’d be giggling, and that would sort of get him ready to act.”
After conducting several interviews with members of the production crew, the detective submitted his findings, writing “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 child actor] on his penis and buttocks, masking it as play,” according to the arrest warrant.
“He would invite the family to off-set gatherings, with his wife buying Christmas gifts to foster closeness, making [the child] feel special and dependent — classic grooming to erode boundaries, isolate the victim, and silence suspicions by blending abuse into normalcy,” the detective continued in his report. “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.”
Busfield has appeared in several films, including Revenge of the Nerds, Field of Dreams, and Little Big League. He has won an Emmy for his role on the drama series Thirtysomething.
Shortly before Busfield was accused of misconduct, his wife, Gilbert, posted about inappropriate age-gap relationships in Hollywood, referring to her time on Little House on the Prairie when she was 15, and her character was “expected to ‘fall in love with’ and kiss a man on film who was several years older than she was.”
“Through the lens of today, this is shocking. I have no words other than to say, ‘I WAS A CHILD.’ ‘I WAS FIFTEEN.’ And I was the good news,” Gilbert wrote. “Thank God my mom and Michael [Landon Sr.] and so many others were there to make sure I was safe. Can you imagine if I hadn’t had them all? I am so fortunate (Sort of). Many other young women aren’t.” Gilbert has since deactivated her Instagram account.
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