The legal saga of actor and director Timothy Busfield continued in New Mexico today as a grand jury indicted him on four counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor. Busfield surrendered to authorities last month after two boys claimed to be sexually abused by Busfield on the set of The Cleaning Lady in October 2022 and September 2023. Busfield, who directed several episodes of the now-canceled Fox drama, denies the allegations and claims the family is seeking revenge against him for recasting the boys after they aged out of the roles. Per a statement from the Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman (via The Hollywood Reporter), “This case will proceed through the judicial process and is expected to move forward to trial.” Each of the charges against Busfield carries a minimum three-year prison sentence that he must serve; they can’t be suspended or deferred.
After being initially notified of the allegations, Warner Bros. launched an internal investigation but found no evidence of misconduct on Busfield’s part. However, the Personal Life tab on his Wikipedia reveals several sexual assault allegations, in 1994, 2012, and two in 2026. In 1994, a 17-year-old extra who worked on Little Big League, a family comedy starring Busfield, accused him of sexual assault. After attempting to sue her for defamation, he lost the defamation suit, settled with his accuser, and then had to pay $150,000 to the law firm he accused of making up the allegations, the Deseret News reported at the time. In 2012, a 28-year-old woman accused Busfield of groping her at an L.A. movie theater, which he claimed was consensual. More recently, following the child sexual abuse charges, a man accused Busfield of molesting his 16-year-old daughter, who was auditioning for a role at a theater co-founded by Busfield.
Making matters even murkier, The Cleaning Lady‘s director of photography Alan Caudillo claims he never saw Busfield tickle the children or talk to them unsupervised, but he did find the boys’ father, Ronald Rodis, “creepy” and “very aggressive,” THR notes.