Timothy Busfield will be back in court next week for a hearing on whether he’ll be allowed to leave jail while a sex abuse case against him moves through the courts.
Sam Bregman, the DA for Bernalillo County, New Mexico, said at a press conference Thursday that Busfield will have a pre-trial detention hearing on Jan. 20. Bregman’s office has filed a motion that the actor and director remain in custody before going to trial, arguing that Busfield has shown a “calculated pattern” of “predatory conduct” in the past. The motion also contains a new allegation that in the early 2000s, Busfield groped a then 16-year-old girl auditioning for a role at the B Street Theatre, a theater company he co-founded in Sacramento, California (he is no longer involved in the company).
Busfield has been charged with two counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor under age 13 and one count of child abuse in New Mexico. An arrest warrant issued Jan. 9 alleges that Busfield had inappropriate sexual contact with two boys on the set of The Cleaning Lady, a former Fox series (produced by Warner Bros. TV) on which Busfield directed several episodes.
Busfield turned himself into police earlier this week but has maintained his innocence. Larry Stein, a lawyer for Busfield, said his client took and passed an independent polygraph examination related to the allegations.
In his press conference, Bregman said he would not go into detail about the allegations in the case, preferring to save his and his prosecutors’ arguments for the courtroom. He did, however, lay out a timeline of the next steps in the case, beginning the with pre-trial detention hearing on Jan. 20.
Following that hearing, the DA’s office will bring formal charges against Busfield, and he’ll be arraigned and have a chance to enter a plea. Assuming it goes to trial, the case will probably play out over a span of 12 to 18 months, Bregman said.
Bregman declined to directly answer a question about whether more possible victims might come to light, but he did say the case is “still very much under investigation.”