Warning: The following post reports on allegations of child sexual abuse.
Melissa Gilbert is retreating from social media as her husband of 12 years, Timothy Busfield, faces allegations of child sexual abuse.
Gilbert’s Instagram account was offline as of Sunday morning, People reported. Instead of seeing the Little House on the Prairie star’s Instagram posts under the handle @melissagilbertofficial, users now get an error message saying her profile “isn’t available.”
The development comes days after the allegations against Busfield became public knowledge. On Friday, a Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court judge in Albuquerque, New Mexico, issued a warrant for the West Wing actor’s arrest, as The New York Times reported.
Busfield was charged with two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor and one count of child abuse. A police affidavit — obtained and shared online by Deadline — said two child actors from the Fox TV show The Cleaning Lady — on which Busfield was a director, executive producer, and guest star — said Busfield had touched them inappropriately. One of the two boys said he was 7 years old when Busfield started touching his genitals.
Warner Bros. Television, the studio behind The Cleaning Lady, said it was “aware of the current charges against Mr. Busfield and have been and will continue to cooperate with law enforcement.”
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In the affidavit — which refers to the child actors by “SL” and “VL” — Officer Marvin Brown of the Albuquerque Police Department said that Busfield and Gilbert told him they “did have a relationship with SL and VL and their family outside of work [and] did buy the two boys Christmas gifts and were together on several social functions.”
In his conclusion of the affidavit, Officer Brown wrote, “In my training and experience, pedophiles often infiltrate families under a rusted role, like Timothy, who, as a producer, exploited the hectic film sets to tickle and touch SL on his penis and buttocks, masking it as play. He would invite the family to off-set gatherings, with his wife buying Christmas gifts to foster closeness, making SL feel special and dependent — classic grooming to erode boundaries, isolate the victim, and silence suspicions by blending abuse into normalcy. This dual tactic, charming parents while secretly violating the child, builds a web of complicity that is hard to unravel, delaying detection, as families trust the abuser’s facade.”
Neither Busfield nor Gilbert has publicly commented on the allegations.
If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual assault, contact the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network’s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or someone you know is the victim of child abuse, contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
