A judge on Tuesday ordered that Timothy Busfield, the actor and director, be released from jail ahead of his trial on charges that he had sexual contact with a child actor who appeared on a television show he directed.
Mr. Busfield, who has been a fixture of the television and film industry since the 1980s, has been held in a New Mexico jail since he turned himself in to the authorities in Albuquerque on Jan. 13. He has vehemently denied the charges, and his lawyers sought his release as he defends himself against what they have described as “manufactured allegations.”
Prosecutors have accused Mr. Busfield in court papers of “repeatedly” touching the genitals and backside of a child actor, who told the authorities that he was 7 and 8 years old at the time. The child and his twin brother, identified in court papers only by their initials, worked on the set of “The Cleaning Lady,” a Fox crime drama filmed in Albuquerque. Mr. Busfield began directing for the show in 2022.
At a hearing at the Bernalillo County Courthouse on Tuesday, Judge David A. Murphy allowed Mr. Busfield, 68, to be released, noting that he had willingly surrendered to the authorities.
“There’s no evidence of a pattern of criminal conduct,” Judge Murphy said. “There are no similar allegations involving children in his past.”
Mr. Busfield, in handcuffs and an orange jail uniform, nodded as the judge explained the conditions of his release, which allow him to travel as long as he reports to the pretrial services department in Albuquerque as required.
In arguing for Mr. Busfield’s release, Amber Fayerberg, one of his lawyers, said her client could not significantly influence witnesses because the allegations had “canceled” him.
“His career is over — in the span of six days, it’s done,” she said. “Edited out of projects, talent agency dropped him, allegations plastered all over global media of pedophilia.” (The talent agency Innovative Artists has dropped Mr. Busfield as a client, and Amazon MGM Studios plans to edit him out of an upcoming romantic comedy.)
The actor faces two counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor, a charge punishable by up to six years in prison, and one count of child abuse, which is punishable by up to three years in prison.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Savannah Brandenburg-Koch, had argued that Mr. Busfield should be held in jail ahead of his trial, asserting that he had a “documented pattern of sexual misconduct, abuse of authority and grooming behavior.”
In a court filing seeking Mr. Busfield’s continued detention, the prosecutor cited a report made to the authorities in Albuquerque last week by a man named Colin Swift, who said Mr. Busfield had kissed his daughter and put his hands down her pants when she was 16, at the B Street Theater in Sacramento.
Reached by phone, the daughter said the encounter had occurred in 2000, when she was a 16- or 17-year-old intern at the theater, which Mr. Busfield founded in the 1980s. She had been cleaning his office, she said, when he came up behind her and grabbed her. She said that she had pushed him away and that he had blocked the door until she screamed and was able to leave the room.
According to the filing, Mr. Swift reported that Mr. Busfield had “begged” the family not to report the encounter so long as he received therapy, and Mr. Swift agreed.
Judge Murphy noted that he put less weight behind those allegations because they had not been vetted by the legal system.
The B Street Theater said in a statement that it had hired a lawyer at the time to conduct an internal investigation into the incident, but it declined to specify any findings. The statement said that Mr. Busfield had not had any role in the organization since 2001.
The prosecution also cited in the filing an accusation from 1994, when an extra who had been on the set of the movie “Little Big League” with Mr. Busfield sued him in Los Angeles Superior Court, asserting that he had served her alcohol, groped her and tried to have sex with her in a trailer. Mr. Busfield denied the accusations and sued for extortion, the filing says, and the parties settled.
In 2012, the filing says, a 28-year-old woman accused Mr. Busfield of touching her genitals in a Los Angeles movie theater. At the time, Mr. Busfield described the contact as consensual, and prosecutors declined to bring charges.
“The behavior hasn’t stopped,” Ms. Brandenburg-Koch said at the hearing. “In fact, it’s continued, as we see in these reports and other allegations, and he’s continued to get away with them.”
Mr. Busfield’s most prominent roles were on the television series “Thirtysomething” (he won an Emmy for his work on the show) and “The West Wing.” He later established himself as a frequent television director, stepping in for episodes of shows such as “The Night Shift” and “This Is Us.” He is married to the actress Melissa Gilbert, who was in the spectators’ gallery of the courtroom on Tuesday.
Since a warrant was issued for Mr. Busfield’s arrest this month, the actor’s representatives have made a concerted effort to refute the charges. They released a video of Mr. Busfield forcefully asserting his innocence; the results of a polygraph test that they said showed Mr. Busfield was telling the truth; and snippets of audio recordings from interviews in which the child actors told the authorities that Mr. Busfield had not touched them inappropriately.
An Albuquerque police officer who investigated the case wrote in an affidavit that when an officer interviewed the brothers in 2024, they did not disclose any sexual contact, but said Mr. Busfield, who was also an executive producer on the show, would “tickle them on the stomach and legs.” Roughly a year later, one of the boys told a forensic child interviewer that Mr. Busfield had touched his “private area” over his clothes while on the set, the affidavit said. The boys acted in the show from 2022 to 2024, when they were recast. (A showrunner attributed the decision in part to their having aged out of the role.)
The prosecution asserts that the account of the boy, who is now 11 years old, is supported by therapy records diagnosing him with post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, and by medical records documenting “grooming and sexual abuse concerns.”
Last year, an independent investigator for Warner Bros., which co-produced “The Cleaning Lady,” looked into allegations concerning Mr. Busfield and the twins after a lawyer representing the family shared a draft of a legal document. According to a copy of the investigator’s report that was shared by the defense, the investigator was “unable to corroborate” any of the allegations.
The report notes that the show’s lead actress, Elodie Yung, told the independent investigator that the boys’ mother was upset over her sons’ being recast and said she would “get her revenge” against Mr. Busfield.
The boys’ parents and a lawyer who had represented them did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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