What Is Going on With Timothy Busfield?

I’ve long been fascinated with an aspect of the 1996 comedy First Kid. The film is about the son of a fictional American President who gets a new security service protector in Sinbad. That’s the basic premise. I loved it as a kid, and it stood out at the time because I remember it being the first time I was told about the dangers of the internet (or at least the first that I remember). The titular kid spends most of the film talking in a chat room to someone he believes is a girl his age, but it turns out to be much worse.

You come to find out that the person he was talking to was not a young girl, but an older man who was the kid’s secret service protection at the beginning of the film, who was fired for being a jerk. He gets the kid to meet up with him and ends up in a violent shootout in a mall (family movies used to hit different). I was explaining this plot to a coworker the other night and tried to tell him about the actor who played the disgraced agent. After naming a few movies, my coworker’s eyes went wide as he said, “Wait, Timothy Busfield just got in trouble for assaulting a minor.”

Yes, it was Busfield who appeared in First Kid as a former secret service agent, and yes, he has been accused of, and now arrested for, child sexual abuse charges. The actor has denied any wrongdoing, and the alleged incidents took place earlier this decade while he was working on the show The Cleaning Lady. A warrant was issued for his arrest on the 9th, and the actor turned himself in yesterday, with his mugshot quickly making the rounds.

Fallout from the allegations was swift. Busfield was due to appear in an episode of Law & Order this Thursday, and it was pulled from release. His wife, Melissa Gilbert, deactivated her social media. Deadline reports that authorities in New Mexico, where the charges were filed, are attempting to hold Busfield until trial. Should the actor be found guilty, he could be looking at decades behind bars.

This is not the first assault allegation against Busfield, either. He was accused of assaulting a 16-year-old girl while working on the film Little Big League in 1993. Busfield countersued for defamation and settled out of court.