UPDATED with video: Melissa Gilbert told Good Morning America on Monday hat she is “100% confident” that her husband Timothy Busfield will be exonerated as he faces four counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor.
In her first sit-down interview since Busfield was charged, Gilbert told co-anchor George Stephanopoulos, “This has been the most traumatizing experience of our lives. Our life as we knew it is done. 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. The last person in the world who would hurt a child.”
Gilbert appeared with her husband’s attorney, Larry Stein, to defend the actor.
The allegations stem from alleged incidents on the New Mexico set of the the Fox/Warner Bros TV series The Cleaning Lady. Busfield pleaded not guilty to all four counts.
Stephanopoulos also asked Gilbert about references in the criminal complaint to two women who accused Busfield of sexual assault in 1994 and 2012, and that he settled one of the cases.
Gilbert said, “I need to make something really abundantly clear. These allegations have been out in the ether for a very long time.”
Asked whether she was aware of those allegations, Gilbert said, “When Tim and I got together, the internet existed. I didn’t go into my relationship with him blind. I am neither naive, nor am I complicit. I talked to him about it. I asked him questions about it. I heard his side of the story, which no one has ever heard, which is the truth, and when the time is right, and that is not now, Tim will tell the truth of all of these past allegations when he needs to.”
ABC News said that the parents did not respond to a request for comment. GMA noted that Busfield’s legal team alleged that the parents of the twin child actors blamed him when their sons were recast and “wanted revenge.” Stein said that both of the boys answered no when originally asked by a therapist whether Busfield touched them inappropriately.
Stephanopoulos pointed out that in one of the subsequent interviews, one of the boys did say he was touched inappropriately.
Stein responded, “That interview was preceded by the father telling the boy, when he would wake up at night, that he was having nightmares. The boy would say, and we have this in the records, the boy would say, ‘I wasn’t having nightmares. I was just hot or cold.’ And the therapist said, ‘Well, why didn’t you tell your father that you weren’t having nightmares?’ He said, ‘Because I didn’t want to disappoint him.”
Stephanopoulos noted that the prosecution contended that the alleged touching was first reported by a therapist, not the parents.
The prosecutor said in a statement to the network, “A neutral grand jury indicted the defendant. This office follows her ethical duty to only proceed on cases where a good faith basis exists to prosecute.”