{"id":568146,"date":"2026-04-06T16:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T16:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/568146\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T16:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T16:24:09","slug":"melissa-gilbert-tells-gma-that-timothy-busfield-will-be-exonerated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/568146\/","title":{"rendered":"Melissa Gilbert Tells ‘GMA’ That Timothy Busfield Will Be Exonerated"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tUPDATED with video: Melissa Gilbert<\/a> told Good Morning America<\/a> on Monday hat she is \u201c100% confident\u201d that her husband Timothy Busfield<\/a> will be exonerated as he faces four counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her first sit-down interview since Busfield was charged, Gilbert told co-anchor George Stephanopoulos, \u201cThis has been the most traumatizing experience of our lives. Our life as we knew it is done. We are grieving what we had, all of our plans, all of our dreams, all of our ideas, all of our projects. For Tim, it\u2019s done. He\u2019s canceled. Even if he\u2019s exonerated, he will always be that guy. The last person in the world who would hurt a child.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGilbert appeared with her husband\u2019s attorney, Larry Stein, to defend the actor. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe allegations stem from alleged incidents on the New Mexico set of the the Fox\/Warner Bros\u00a0TV series\u00a0The Cleaning Lady<\/a>. Busfield pleaded not guilty to all four counts.<\/p>\n

\n\tStephanopoulos also asked Gilbert about references in the criminal complaint to two women who accused Busfield of sexual assault in 1994 and 2012, and that he settled one of the cases. <\/p>\n

\n\tGilbert said, \u201cI need to make something really abundantly clear. These allegations have been out in the ether for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked whether she was aware of those allegations, Gilbert said, \u201cWhen Tim and I got together, the internet existed. I didn\u2019t go into my relationship with him blind. I am neither naive, nor am I complicit. I talked to him about it. I asked him questions about it. I heard his side of the story, which no one has ever heard, which is the truth, and when the time is right, and that is not now, Tim will tell the truth of all of these past allegations when he needs to.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tABC News said that the parents did not respond to a request for comment. GMA noted that Busfield\u2019s legal team alleged that the parents of the twin child actors blamed him when their sons were recast and \u201cwanted revenge.\u201d Stein said that both of the boys answered no when originally asked by a therapist whether Busfield touched them inappropriately.<\/p>\n

\n\tStephanopoulos pointed out that in one of the subsequent interviews, one of the boys did say he was touched inappropriately.<\/p>\n

\n\tStein responded, \u201cThat interview was preceded by the father telling the boy, when he would wake up at night, that he was having nightmares. The boy would say, and we have this in the records, the boy would say, \u2018I wasn\u2019t having nightmares. I was just hot or cold.\u2019 And the therapist said, \u2018Well, why didn\u2019t you tell your father that you weren\u2019t having nightmares?\u2019 He said, \u2018Because I didn\u2019t want to disappoint him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStephanopoulos noted that the prosecution contended that the alleged touching was first reported by a therapist, not the parents.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe prosecutor said in a statement to the network, \u201cA neutral grand jury indicted the defendant. This office follows her ethical duty to only proceed on cases where a good faith basis exists to prosecute.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UPDATED with video: Melissa Gilbert told Good Morning America on Monday hat she is \u201c100% confident\u201d that her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,88809,10815,12260,12261,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-568146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-good-morning-america","10":"tag-media","11":"tag-melissa-gilbert","12":"tag-timothy-busfield","13":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}