Timothy Busfield indicted on child sex abuse charges by New Mexico grand jury

Timothy Busfield has been indicted by a New Mexico grand jury on child sex abuse charges, prosecutors said Friday.

The 68-year-old Emmy-winning actor and director was indicted on four counts of criminal sexual contact of a child under 13, the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

“This case will proceed through the judicial process and is expected to move forward to trial,” the statement said, adding that no further information would be released at this time.

Busfield turned himself in to authorities in New Mexico last month after an arrest warrant was issued by the Albuquerque Police Department alleging he abused 11-year-old twin boys on a film set. 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.

A New Mexico judge ordered him released while he awaits trial.

Larry Stein, an attorney for Busfield, said that the indictment “was not unexpected.”

As the saying goes, a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich,” Stein said in a statement to Yahoo. “What is deeply concerning is that the District Attorney is choosing to proceed on a case that is fundamentally unsound and cannot be proven at trial.

“This prosecution appears driven by something other than the facts or the law,” he added. “Mr. Busfield will fight these charges at every stage and looks forward to testing the State’s case in open court — where evidence matters — not behind closed doors.”

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 Melissa Gilbert, who starred in Little House on the Prairie, since 2013.

What are the allegations against Busfield?

According to the indictment filed in Bernalillo County’s 2nd Judicial District Court on Friday, Busfield allegedly “touched or applied force” to the penis or buttocks of one of the boys on four separate occasions between Oct. 19, 2022, and May 30, 2024.

The minors are not identified in court documents.

According to the initial criminal complaint filed in support of the warrant, 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.

On the set, Busfield would tell the boys to call him “Uncle Tim,” per the complaint. 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, 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. He 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.” He did not say he had been touched in the genital area.

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,” according to the criminal complaint.

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,” per 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

A 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 a detention 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.

What else has Busfield said about the case?

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.”