Tim Busfield was indicted on child sex abuse. Now four women say he abused them. ~ ONEEL JRNL

At least four women have told police that the Emmy-award winning actor and director Timothy Busfield groped their breasts and genitals, and forced himself on them, dating from 1993 to 2000. One was a 16-year-old community theater intern when she said Busfield pushed his hand into her pants and his tongue into her mouth.

The women came forward after Busfield was arrested onsuspicion of child sex abuseon January 13. The women shared their stories with an Albuquerque police detective in January according to six video interviews with the women that USA TODAY obtained from the Second Judicial District Court in New Mexico under a public records request.

Agrand jury indictedBusfield on four counts of criminal sexual contact of a child on February 6. A trial date has been set for May 2027 in New Mexico.

Busfield, 68, is best known for his roles in "The West Wing" and "Thirtysomething." He has denied the charges.

Larry Stein, a civil attorney representing Busfield, told USA TODAY that these allegations aren't relevant to the boys' case. "I will not waste my time nor the public's commenting on 30-year-old unproven allegations with adult women," he said. "I don't want to focus everyone's attention on on the irrelevant facts of these women. And I don't want to say anything negative about them. They are unproven allegations. They aren't relevant to this case."

Instead, Stein says the case is about two boys who denied abuse and a year and a half later, after prodding from their father, said they were abused.

"Every single witnesses denies that it happened or could have happened. There is nobody that says they observed him doing anything inappropriate. Every single witness who was there has said he did absolutely nothing wrong and he couldn't have done anything wrong," Stein said. "He's worked with 100s of children over his career. And none of them have ever said he did anything."

Director and actor Timothy Busfield looks on before a hearing in the Second District Judicial Court at the Bernalillo County Courthouse on Jan. 20, 2026 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

At least two of the women told police that when they refused Busfield's advances, he told them their future in the film industry was limited. One, then a 20-year-old apprentice at a Sacramento theater, said Busfield would often whisper in her ear, "You don't belong in this business. You have no talent."

One told police that Busfield and his wife, the actressMelissa Gilbert, encouraged her to do drugs with them.

Busfield is accused of abusing twin boys on the set of "The Cleaning Lady" when they were seven and eight years old. The crime thriller, mostly shot in an Albuquerque studio, followed a surgeon in the Philippines who comes to the U.S. for her son's medical treatment and winds up working as a cleaner for the mob.

The boys' attorney said that their refusal of Busfield's advances got them fired from the show, according to a court document filed by Busfield's defense team.

Busfield's attorney said in a court hearing on January 20 that the boys' parents were angry that their children were dropped from the TV series after three seasons. The parents, Busfield's attorneys say, were so dependent on their boys' salaries – about $2 million over three seasons – that they manufactured the abuse and manipulated their children to tell the lie.

The women say they contacted police to share their stories because they say what Busfield is accused of with the boys feels familiar.

He was charismatic. He was well liked.

He abused them on set, in a trailer or while working, they told police.

Some were afraid to tell anyone. Others say they did, but nothing was done.

"I've been telling this story my whole life because it's affected me and I wanted people to know about it. I just haven't gotten to tell it to police officers because I was too old at the point where I thought that anyone would take me seriously," one of the women told Albuquerque Police Detective Marvin Brown in a recorded interview on January 15.

USA TODAY is not naming the women who alleged the abuse.

Brown, who has worked on child sex abuse cases since 1989, has talked with more than two dozen cast and crew members, and reviewed therapy and medical reports for this case.

USA TODAY reviewed the recordings with six women Brown interviewed in January. Four alleged sexual abuse. One told him that he touched her inappropriately and when she refused his advances and later quit that Busfield told her she would never work in the film industry. Another woman said Busfield told her about his sexual fantasies and followed her car to a gas station when she tried to avoid him.

"It was just a creepy moment with the guy who obviously was ill," the woman told Brown in a January 23 interview. When she saw Busfield's arrest, she thought: "I thought these are not isolated cases. And your time is not the one and only time it's ever happened. This time it was a kid."

Brown told one of the six women he interviewed that some of the details could be used to show Busfield's character such as "how aggressive he is."

Here are their stories:

The intern

She was a16-year-old internworking at B Street Theatre in Sacramento in 1996. Busfield and his brother owned the theater.

She says Busfield asked her to clean his office one day when the other interns went to a warehouse.

"He grabbed me in between the legs and pulled me down from the ladder and turned me around and stuck his tongue down my throat and touched me all over aggressively," she told police. "And I pushed him off of me."

He had grabbed her breasts and pushed his hand into her pants.

"I was freaked out because at first I was just in shock that it was happening, but then he was so big and just gnarly," she told Brown in a recorded interview on January 15. "I was scared."

She pushed Busfield off.

She said she immediately told a friend and a woman who worked in the box office. She then left work and took a few days off. Busfield's brother, she says, told her if she didn't return, she would be fired.

Afterward, she said the interns no longer rehearsed with Busfield. "And so, everybody was mad at me, so that's why I thought it was my fault, because (the boys) were like, 'We don't get to work with Tim anymore?' "

Her father and her stepfather met with Busfield.

"Tim admitted doing this. He started crying with all of his Emmy award winning acting and I fell for it. I felt badly for him," her father said in a January 13 call with police. "So, I told him if he went to therapy for a year or two, that I would not report this to the police."

The father, a therapist, said he now worries he had been too empathetic to Busfield, at the expense of his daughter who is now 42.

"His internship program was nothing more than a pool of young people that would do anything to get ahead in their acting career and looked at Tim Busfield as a God," he told Brown. "And he took advantage of them many times over many years."

Actor and director Timothy Busfield is be eligible for release from a New Mexico jail as he faces charges of child sex abuse, a judge ruled on Tuesday, Jan. 20, during a pretrial hearing in New Mexico.

The ruling was made during Busfield's first in-person appearance in a New Mexico courtroom. A tearful Melissa Gilbert, who was seated behind her husband in the gallery, quietly celebrated the judge's decision.