Timothy Busfield’s wife, Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert, deleted her Instagram account over the weekend.
An arrest warrant was issued for Busfield on January 9. He’s accused of abusing twin, 11-year-old boys when they were seven and he was directing them on a TV show called The Cleaning Lady. The charges allege the Emmy-winning Thirtysomething star repeatedly touched their “penis and buttocks, masking it as play.”
Busfield has been officially charged with two counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor and child abuse.
Busfield and Gilbert live in upstate New York. The arrest warrant is for New Mexico. Currently, various new outlets are reporting Busfield’s location is unknown and the U.S. Marshall service has been engaged to locate the actor.
As the drama around Busfield increases, NBC has pushed a Law & Order: SVU episode guest-starring Busfield up a week from January 15 to January 22.
The 61-year-old Gilbert married Busfield in 2013. After the charges were filed, the Little House star deleted her Instagram account. This is likely due to the blowback over a recent post where the actress self-righteously attacked former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Kelly said of pedophilia that “there’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old.”
The leftwing Gilbert saw an opening to attack:
“I am actually nauseated,” Gilbert wrote and then bizarrely used her own experience as a 15-year-old actress to condemn Kelly. When Gilbert was 15, her Little House character fell in love and there was a kiss involved. I was “expected to ‘fall in love with’ and kiss a man on film who was several years older than she was,” she wrote. “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. Thank God my mom and Michael [Landon] and so many others were there to make sure I was safe,” she added. “Can you imagine if I hadn’t had them all? I am so fortunate (Sort of). Many other young women aren’t.”
“You need to be careful with your words,” she told Megyn Kelly.
Good grief. A chaste kiss is not too much to ask of a seasoned 15-year-old actress.
Two days ago, after the news broke of the charges filed against Gilbert’s husband, Kelly blasted Gilbert:
On Nov 17, actor Melissa Gilbert made sure she got herself in the paper by attacking yours truly for allegedly downplaying the seriousness of Epstein’s abuse of teenagers (in fact I made clear that abuse at any age disgusts me). When she launched her attack, SHE KNEW that her husband, actor/director Timothy Busfield was actively under investigation for allegedly MOLESTING TWO CHILDREN WHEN THEY WERE 7 YEARS OLD. She knew bc (we learned today) that she had been on the call when POLICE told her husband all about it on November
THERE IS CURRENTLY A WARRANT OUT FOR HIS ARREST — charged with two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor and one count of child abuse, allegedly taking place over a period of years. His wife knew this was in the works.
And now Half Pint has deleted her Instagram account.
Gilbert must have also known that Busfield was twice before accused of sexual misconduct, once in 1994 and again in 2024. No criminal charges were filed and Gilbert has not been officially accused of any wrongdoing.
Busfield claims he’s done nothing wrong in this case and that the mother of the twin boys might be seeking retribution after the boys were replaced on the show.
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