Timothy Busfield charged with child sexual abuse related to TV show
Actor and director Timothy Busfield has been indicted by a New Mexico jury on charges of sexual abuse of children by young actors who appeared in the film “Cleaning Women.”
At least four women have told police that Emmy Award-winning actor and director Timothy Busfield groped and forced himself on their breasts and genitals between 1993 and 2000. One of them, a 16-year-old community theater intern, said Mr. Busfield shoved his hand down his pants and shoved his tongue into his mouth.
The women came forward after Busfield was arrested on January 13 on suspicion of child sexual abuse. The women disclosed their stories to Albuquerque police detectives in January, according to six video interviews with the women obtained by USA TODAY from New Mexico’s Second Judicial District Court through public records requests.
A grand jury indicted Basfield on February 6 on four counts of criminal sexual contact with a child. A trial date is set for May 2027 in New Mexico.
Busfield, 68, is best known for his roles on “The West Wing” and “Thirty Something.” He denies the charges.
Civil attorney Larry Stein, who represents Busfield, told USA TODAY that these allegations are unrelated to the boys’ cases. “I’m not going to waste my time or public comment on 30 years of unproven allegations with an adult woman,” he said. “I don’t want to draw attention to irrelevant facts about these women and say anything negative about them. These are unproven allegations. They have nothing to do with this case.”
Instead, Stein said the case is about two boys who denied abuse and who, a year and a half later, claimed they had been abused after their father urged them to do so.
“All the witnesses deny that it happened or could have happened. No one said they saw him do anything inappropriate. All the witnesses who were there said he did nothing wrong and couldn’t have done anything wrong,” Stein said. “He’s worked with hundreds of kids throughout his career, and none of them have ever said he did anything.”
At least two of the women told police that when they rejected Mr. Busfield’s advances, they were told their futures in the film industry were limited. One then-20-year-old apprentice at a theater in Sacramento said Busfield often whispered in his ear, “You’re not cut out for this business. You don’t have talent.”
One person told police that Busfield and his wife, actress Melissa Gilbert, encouraged her to take drugs.
Busfield is accused of abusing twin boys on the set of “Cleaning Women” when the boys were 7 and 8 years old. The crime thriller, shot mostly in an Albuquerque studio, is about a Filipino surgeon who comes to the United States to treat his son and ends up working as a scavenger for the mob.
According to court documents filed by Busfield’s attorneys, the boys’ attorneys said they were fired from the show after rejecting Busfield’s advances.
Ms. Busfield’s lawyer said at a court hearing on January 20 that the boys’ parents were angry that their children were dropped from the TV series after three seasons. Busfield’s lawyers say the parents were so dependent on their sons’ salaries (roughly $2 million over three seasons) that they fabricated allegations of abuse and manipulated their children into lying.
The women said they contacted police to share their stories because they felt nostalgic about the allegations against Busfield against the boys.
He was charismatic. He was very well liked.
They told police he abused them on set, in his trailer and while on the job.
Some were afraid to tell anyone. Others say they did, but nothing was done.
“I kept telling this story because it affected me and I wanted people to know about it, but I couldn’t tell the police because I was too old to think anyone would take me seriously,” one of the women told Albuquerque Police Detective Marvin Brown in a recorded interview on January 15.
USA TODAY is not publishing the name of the woman who alleged abuse.
Brown, who has worked on child sexual abuse cases since 1989, spoke with more than 20 cast and crew members and reviewed treatment options and medical reports in the case.
USA TODAY reviewed recordings of six women interviewed by Brown in January. Four people are suspected of sexual abuse. One person said Busfield touched her inappropriately and when she declined his advances and quit, Busfield told her she would never work in the film industry. Another woman said she followed Busfield to a gas station when she told him about her sexual fantasies and tried to avoid him.
“It was just a creepy moment with a man who was obviously sick,” the woman told Brown in a Jan. 23 interview. When she saw Busfield’s arrest, she thought, “These aren’t isolated incidents. And your time isn’t the only thing that’s ever happened. This time it was a child.”
Brown told one of the six women she interviewed that some of the details could be used to show Busfield’s personality, such as “how aggressive he was.”
Their story is as follows.
intern student
She was a 16-year-old intern working at B Street Theater in Sacramento in 1996. Busfield and his brother owned a theater.
She said one day when the other interns went to the warehouse, Busfield asked them to clean the office.
“He grabbed me between my legs and pulled me off the ladder, turned me around, stuck his tongue down my throat and violently groped me all over,” she told police. “And I pushed him away from me.”
He grabbed her breasts and shoved his hands inside her pants.
“At first I was shocked because I was just shocked that this was happening, but then he was just so big and just so violent,” she told Brown in a recorded interview on January 15.
She pushed Busfield away.
She said she immediately told a friend and a woman who worked at the entertainment company about the incident. She then quit her job and took a few days off. Busfield said her brother told her that if she didn’t return, he would fire her.
After that, the interns stopped rehearsing with Busfield, she said. “So everyone got mad at me. So I thought it was my fault, because[the boys]were like, ‘Can’t we work with Tim anymore?'”
Her father and stepfather met Busfield.
“Tim admitted what he did,” his father said in a Jan. 13 call with police. “He started crying in his Emmy-winning performance and I got into it. I felt sorry for him.” “So I told him I wouldn’t call the police even if I went to therapy for a year or two.”
Her father, a therapist, said he now worries he had too much sympathy for Busfield at the expense of his daughter, now 42.
“His internship program was just a bunch of young people who would do anything to get a career in acting, and they looked at Tim Busfield like a god,” he told Brown. “And he utilized them many times over the years.”
apprentice
At age 20, she left her boyfriend and job in San Francisco to apprentice at Sacramento’s B Street Theater in 2000.
Two months into her new role, she told police she was standing alone in a light booth leaning against a ladder when Busfield began kissing and groping her. He touched her breasts, buttocks and genitals over her clothes.
“It felt like a sexual assault,” she told Brown. “He almost jumped into me. I was shocked because I didn’t see that coming.”
“I said no. I’m not interested. And he was getting heavy. His body was heavy, he was upset, and he was really angry that I did that to him,” she said in a Jan. 23 interview. “It was really, really shocking to me, and it was really, really scary. I mean, he’s the owner of the theater and I’m the apprentice here.”
She said Busfield became violent and left.
She told Brown that the harassment began then and continued throughout her one-year apprenticeship.
“He was whispering in my ear that I had no talent,” she says. “He would tell me I was in the wrong business. He would say, ‘Get out now. You don’t belong in this business. You don’t have talent.'”
“I remember being at a party, like a celebration, and he was trying to find me and do it. He whispered horrible things in my ear and did it several times,” she said.
She didn’t tell anyone.
“I was also promised a stock card, which they never gave me. I felt like it was punishment for rejecting him and was really upset,” she said. “He let me know over and over again that he didn’t like me, that he didn’t want me here as an apprentice, that he thought I was a talentless (blasphemous) person who should get out of this industry.”
extra
She was 17 and appearing as an extra on the set of “Little Big League” in Minnesota in 1993 when Busfield invited her and a friend to the trailer. Busfield gave her a beer. “They were trying to get us drunk,” she told police.
When she tried to leave, she told police, the man pushed her against the refrigerator and shoved his genitals into her with his bare feet.
She told Brown that she jumped out of the trailer and went to report the incident to Minneapolis police.
“They basically told me, ‘Look, he’s filming a show here. He’ll be back in California in three weeks. At best he’ll get a slap on the wrist.’ So they really told me it wasn’t worth the time to pursue,” she told Brown in an interview recorded on January 15.
She went to therapy. In 1994, she sued Busfield in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that he assaulted her.
Ms. Busfield sued her lawyer for extortion. The two settled privately, and a judge later dismissed the defamation suit and ordered Busfield to pay her law firm $150,000 in legal fees.
“Thank you for believing in my kids,” she told Brown before hanging up.
actress
In 1991, she was a 26-year-old actress filming Strays with Busfield.
She told police that an assistant director told her that Busfield wanted to practice a scene with her in the trailer.
“It happened so fast. He probably grabbed me around the chest and threw me against the wall. And I mean, that was enough to shock me and scare me. I’m a pretty tough cookie,” she said in a Jan. 19 police interview. “He was trying to push me against the wall and basically dry hump me. I remember him throwing me against the wall with his erection and his tongue and his hands, like he was pushing me against the wall.”
She said she ran to the assistant director and told him to move Bassfield away from her. She kept her distance for the rest of the shoot.
assistant
She took Basfield’s class during the spring semester of her senior year at Michigan State University.
After she graduated with a degree in film in May 2017, Busfield and his wife hired her as a personal assistant.
She managed the schedule, took care of the dog, and took in the laundry. She told police she was on call 24/7.
“The comments Tim made about me were pretty offensive,” she told Brown in a Jan. 15 interview. “I remember when I was little and not necessarily feeling safe with him. He would just push me on the shoulder or make unwanted contact.”
She said he hit upon her while visiting Traverse City for a film festival and asked her to stay late and have drinks with him.
She refused his invitation.
He drove them home from the trip. She told police that she was in the passenger seat when the man put his hand on her knee and said, “‘You better be careful, or I might start having feelings for you, and I might become obsessed with you.'” And, yeah, things got very serious right after that and I didn’t really shut up and I remember crying, and it was noticeable that I was crying. ”
She was 22 years old.
She continued to work for Busfield and Gilbert and followed them to New York City. She worked with him on the film “Guest Artist”.
“When I came to work on Monday, he yelled at me for three hours and told me I was so unprofessional. I would never make it in this industry. I can’t learn from anyone but him,” she told police. “There are just very manipulative words being thrown at me.”
She said Busfield never attacked her, but wanted to share her experience. “He’s very predatory. He’s very manipulative. He’s very charismatic. He’s very charming when he needs to be.”
Laura Trujillo is a national columnist focused on health and wellness. She is the author of “Stepping Back from the Ledge: A Daughter’s Search for Truth and Renewal” and can be reached at ltrujillo@usatoday.com.
