On January 13, actor Timothy Busfield was arrested on suspicion of child sex abuse. He is accused of abusing twin boys on the set of “The Cleaning Lady” when they were seven and eight years old. Busfield’s attorney said in a January 20 court hearing that the boys’ parents were angry that their children were dropped from the TV series after three seasons and manipulated their children to lie about being abused. On February 6, a grand jury indicted Busfield on four counts of criminal sexual contact of a child on February 6. A trial date has been set for May 2027 in New Mexico.
After the initial story broke, six women contacted the Albuquerque police with allegations that Busfield [Spoiler (click to open)]groped their breasts and genitals, and forced himself on them, in incidents dating from 1993 to 2000. The women say they contacted the police to share their stories because Busfield’s abuse allegations with the twin boys felt familiar: Busfield was charismatic and well liked, and he abused them on set, in a trailer or while working. Some were afraid to tell anyone. Others say they did, but nothing was done. One woman told the police that Busfield and his wife, actress Melissa Gilbert (best known for playing Laura Ingalls Wilder on Little House on the Prairie), encouraged her to do drugs with them.
Four of the women alleged sexual abuse. Another woman said Busfield told her about his sexual fantasies and followed her car to a gas station when she tried to avoid him. She said that at the time of the incident, “It was just a creepy moment with the guy who obviously was ill,” but after the allegations about the two boys were made public, she realized “These are not isolated cases. And your time is not the one and only time it’s ever happened. This time it was a kid.”
Victim #1:
One woman said that in 1996, she was a 16-year-old community theater intern at B Street Theatre in Sacramento (which was owned by 39 year old Busfield and his brother). She said that while the other interns were sent to the warehouse, Busfield asked her to clean his office. She told police: [Spoiler (click to open)]“He grabbed me in between the legs and pulled me down from the ladder and turned me around and stuck his tongue down my throat and touched me all over aggressively. And I pushed him off of me.” She said that during the incident, he grabbed her breasts, pushed his hand into her pants, and put his tongue into her mouth. She said, “I was freaked out because at first I was just in shock that it was happening, but then he was so big and just gnarly. I was scared.”
She said she immediately told a friend and a woman who worked in the box office. She then left work and took a few days off. Busfield’s brother, she says, told her if she didn’t return, she would be fired. After the incident, the interns no longer rehearsed with Busfield and the other interns were mad at her, so she thought it was her fault.
Her father (a therapist) and her step-father met with Busfield. Her father told the police: “Tim admitted doing this. He started crying with all of his Emmy award winning acting and I fell for it. I felt badly for him, so I told him if he went to therapy for a year or two, that I would not report this to the police.” He said he now regrets being too empathetic to Busfield at the expense of his daughter. He said: “[Busfield]’s internship program was nothing more than a pool of young people that would do anything to get ahead in their acting career and looked at Tim Busfield as a God, and he took advantage of them many times over many years.”
Victim #2:
Another woman said she was 20 years old in 2000 when she left San Francisco to take an apprenticeship at Busfield’s B Street Theater in Sacramento. Two months into her apprenticeship, she was alone with 43 year old Busfield in the lighting booth when [Spoiler (click to open)] he started kissing her and groping her. He touched her breasts, her butt, her genitals over her clothes. She said: “It felt like sexual assault. He almost dove on me. I was in shock because I didn’t see it coming. I said no, I’m not interested. And he was heaving. His body was heaving and he was upset and he was really angry that I did that to him. It just really, really shocked me and it really, really scared me. I mean, he’s the owner of the theater and here I am an apprentice.” She said that he stormed out and then harassed her for the remaining ten months of her apprenticeship.
She told the police: “He would whisper in my ear that I was untalented. He would tell me that I was in the wrong business. He would say, ‘You should get out now. You don’t belong in this business. You have no talent.’ I remember being at some party, like a gala and he would make a point to find me and do that. He’d whisper these awful things in my ear, and he did it several times.”
She said she didn’t tell anyone about the assault or the harassment. “I was also promised an equity card that they never gave me. I felt like it was a punishment for my refusal of him and that really upset me. He just made it known over and over and over again to me that he didn’t like me, that he didn’t want me there as an apprentice, that he thought I was an untalented piece of (profanity) who should get out of the business.”
Victim #3:
Another woman said that in 1993, she was a 17 year old extra on a Minnesota set for the movie “Little Big League” when 36 year old Busfield invited her and a friend to his trailer where he gave her a beer. She said, “They were trying to get us drunk.” She said that when she tried to leave, [Spoiler (click to open)]he pinned her against a refrigerator and pushed his bare foot into her genitals.
She said that she ran out of the trailer and went to report the incident to Minneapolis police. She said: “They basically told me, ‘Look, he’s filming here. He’ll be back in California in three weeks. The most that’ll happen is he’ll get a slap on the wrist.’ They really told me it wasn’t worth their time for pursuing.” Instead of filing charges, she went to therapy.
In 1994, she sued him in Los Angeles Superior Court for assaulting her. Busfield countersued her attorneys for extortion and defamation. They settled privately, and later a judge dismissed Busfield’s defamation suit and ordered him to pay her law firm the $150,000 it had spent to defend itself.
Of note: during this lawsuit, Eliza Garrett Roberts (wife of actor Eric Roberts/stepmother of Emma Roberts/sister in law of Julia Roberts), testified at a deposition that five years earlier, Busfield had offered to give her oral sex, insisted he’d be “so great in bed” for her, and told her that his wife was a “lousy f**k.”
Victim #4:
In 1991, 26 year old actress Claudia Christian was filming the movie Strays with Busfield. She said that ann assistant director told her that 34 year old Busfield wanted to practice a scene with her in his trailer.
She told the police: [Spoiler (click to open)]“It happened so fast. He probably grabbed me around the chest area and threw me against the wall. And I mean, it was enough to shock and scare me, and I’m a pretty tough cookie. He was trying to push me against the wall and basically dry hump me. I remember the erection and the tongue and the hands and throwing me up against a wall, like pinning me against the wall.” She said: “He had an erection and he shoved his tongue in my mouth and I pushed him off and I ran out of the trailer.” She said she ran to the assistant director and told him to keep Busfield away from her. She kept her distance for the rest of the shoot.
In a recent interview with Mirror US, she said that she didn’t report the incident to the police at the time because she didn’t believe much would come from her speaking out. “They ‘might’ have spoken to him but I doubt it. I very much doubt they would have started an investigation based on my report. She also said that she probably would have been “blackballed from working” if she had spoken out against Busfield at the time. She said, “That was the reality back then in the pre-Me Too days, unfortunately.”
She said that although she doesn’t expect to get any legal justice for what he did to her, the allegations against him are a “pattern of a long term behavior and a sad comment on the fact that men like him got away with this kind of behavior for ages with little or no penalty.”
She said that the news of his arrest for abusing the two boys on set motivated her to come forward: “I was a young woman when he assaulted me and I was able to move forward with little trauma from the incident, but a child does not have the capacity to understand nor process this sort of behavior from an adult and that is why he needs to be stopped, now.”
Victim #5:
One woman said she took a class from Busfield during her senior year at Michigan State University, where he was an artist in residence for the year. After she graduated with a film degree in May 2017, 60 year old Busfield and Gilbert hired her as a personal assistant. Her duties included managing their schedules, taking care of their dogs, and picking up laundry. She said that she was on call 24-7. She told the police: “The comments that Tim made towards me were pretty uncomfy. I remember feeling very early on that I didn’t necessarily feel safe alone with him. He would push my shoulders and kind of just give unwanted touch.”
She said during a trip to Traverse City for a film festival when she was 22 years old, he hit on her and wanted her to stay late to drink with him, but she declined. On the drive home from the film festival, he put his hand on her knee and said, “You better be careful or I might start developing a crush for you or I might have a crush on you.” She said, “And then yeah, it got very serious very quickly after that and I remember crying and it was noticeable that I was crying.”
She said that she stayed at her job and worked on the movie “Guest Artist,” which Busfield directed. She said: “I came in Monday and he proceeded to yell at me for three hours saying that I’ve been so unprofessional. I will never make it in this industry. I’ll never be able to learn from anybody but him. Just very manipulative language being thrown at me.” While she said Busfield never attacked her, she wanted to share her experience because: “He is very predatory. He’s very manipulative. He’s very charismatic. He’s very charming when he needs to be.”
