Actor with Sacramento ties surrenders in NM, says sex abuse charges ‘all lies’
Timothy Busfield, the Emmy Award-winning actor with deep ties to the Sacramento region, turned himself in to police in New Mexico on Tuesday to confront child sex abuse charges stemming from allegations on the set of a television series filmed in Albuquerque.
Busfield, 68, turned himself in at the Metro Detention Center, Albuquerque police spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos said in an email, and would be booked on a warrant issued against him last week.
Busfield, 68, said in a video posted by celebrity news site TMZ that he was innocent and intended to fight the charges.
“I’m going to confront these lies,” he said in the video, reportedly made at his lawyer’s office. “They’re horrible. They’re all lies. And I did not do anything to those little boys.”
New Mexico authorities have accused Busfield of inappropriately touching two child actors, twin brothers, during his time working on the Fox television drama “The Cleaning Lady,” according to court records and an arrest warrant affidavit.
A judge signed the warrant for Busfield’s arrest on Friday on two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor and one count of child abuse, court documents showed.
The alleged abuse occurred between November 2022 and the spring of 2024, according to investigators. The children were 7 and 8 years old at the time of the alleged incidents, the affidavit said.
The children’s mother reported the allegations to Child Protective Services in October 2025, authorities said. Police began investigating the claims the following month after receiving a report from a physician at the University of New Mexico Hospital.
According to the affidavit, one child told investigators that Busfield touched his “private areas” multiple times on set and that he was afraid to report the behavior because Busfield was a director. The second child reported similar conduct over a two-year period, investigators said.
Busfield, who rose to stardom following roles in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams” and in the 1990s as Elliot Weston on the ABC show “Thirtysomething,” told investigators that it was “highly likely” he had physical contact with the children, according to the affidavit, but denied any inappropriate intent. He suggested the allegations may have been motivated by anger over the children not being rehired for a later season.
Busfield, who is best known for his role as a White House reporter on the NBC drama “The West Wing,” is well known in Sacramento, where he moved in the late 1980s. He pitched for several seasons with the Sacramento Smokeys, a semi-professional and collegiate baseball team, and was inducted into the Sacramento Baseball Hall of Fame in 2024.
In 1991, Busfield and his brother, Buck Busfield, founded the B Street Theatre, a Sacramento nonprofit that began as a touring children’s theater company. Busfield previously denied a 1994 allegation that he sexually assaulted a 17-year-old actor on the set of “Little Big League.” That civil case ended in a settlement, with a judge ordering Busfield to pay $150,000, according to court records.
The Los Angeles Times reported that an Instagram account belonging to his wife, actor Melissa Gilbert, had gone dark in the days since the allegations surfaced.
In his affidavit, Albuquerque police officer Marvin Brown said he interviewed Busfield by telephone about the allegations on Nov. 3. Brown said he read Busfield his Miranda rights before the interview, an indication that the investigation could have led to an arrest.
Asked if he had ever picked up the boys and tickled them, as had been alleged, he said that he did not recall doing that, but “it wouldn’t be uncommon for me.”
During the interview, Busfield told Brown that Warner Bros., which backed the production, had notified him the previous spring that they were investigating the allegations. He said that an actor on the program had said that the twins’ mother had vowed to seek revenge after the children were dropped from the final season of the show, the affidavit said.
This story was originally published January 13, 2026 at 12:38 PM.
