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A “grieving” Melissa Gilbert said her life with husband Timothy Busfield “as we knew it is done,” as she vehemently defended him in her first interview since the actor was hit with child sex abuse charges.
“What has this whole episode been like for you?” “Good Morning America” host George Stephanopoulos asked the “Little House on the Prairie” alum, 61, in a preview clip obtained by People.
“Hell,” Gilbert replied. “This has been the most traumatizing experience of our lives.”
Busfield, 68, was arrested in January after Albuquerque police accused him of engaging in unlawful sexual conduct with two 11-year-old boys he met while directing the Fox series “The Cleaning Lady.”
A Bernalillo County grand jury later indicted “The West Wing” star on four counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor under 13 — all third-degree felonies tied to alleged incidents in 2022 and 2023. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial, currently set for May 2027.
“Our life as we knew it is done,” Gilbert continued. “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’s done. He’s canceled. Even if he’s exonerated, he will always be that guy.”
Gilbert then forcefully defended Busfield.
“[He’s] the last person in the world who would hurt a child,” she insisted. “And believe me, if I thought for a second that Tim Busfield hurt a child, he’d have a lot more to worry about than prison.”
A representative for Gilbert told People that the actress and Busfield’s lawyer Larry Stein spoke with Stephanopoulos because she “decided it was time to sit down to clarify the facts of the case, which seem to have become lost to distraction, selective information and clickbait.”
Busfield surrendered to authorities on Jan. 13 and was released about a week later under strict conditions following a pretrial detention hearing.
He is barred from contacting the alleged victims or their families, cannot have unsupervised contact with minors and is prohibited from possessing weapons or using alcohol or drugs while under court supervision.
Gilbert has stood by him throughout the case, including writing a letter to the judge ahead of the January hearing in which she called him “my love, my rock, my partner in business and life,” and said she knows him “better and more intimately than anything in his life ever has.”
“I only want this extraordinary man safe and whole,” she wrote, urging the court to “please, please, take care of my sweet husband.”
She added that being unable to protect him herself “is what is truly breaking my heart.”
She was also seen crying in court when a judge granted his release.
Gilbert and Busfield have been married since 2013. They share five children from previous relationships.
Busfield’s attorney has sharply criticized the prosecution, calling the case “fundamentally unsound” and pointing to what he described as “fatal weaknesses” in the evidence, while vowing to fight the charges at trial.
