Melissa Gilbert continue to damage her image by defending husband Timothy Busfield

Actress Melissa Gilbert is still vehemently refusing to admit it's possible her disgraced husband Timothy Busfield committed the acts of sexual abuse he's accused of committing:

Melissa Gilbert contends she is “neither naive nor … complicit” having married and deciding to stand by her fellow actor Timothy Busfield amid numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, saying she exclusively has “heard his side of the story” and that it is “the truth”.

“I know this man in my bones,” the former Little House on the Prairie cast member remarked in an interview on Monday’s edition of Good Morning America. “No one knows him better than I do.” [...]

Gilbert told Stephanopoulos that she “talked to [Busfield] about it” before the pair embarked on their relationship – and she was satisfied with what he had to say.

“I am neither naive, nor am I complicit,” she said. “I talked to him about it; I asked him questions about it; I heard his side of the story – which no one [else] has ever heard, which is the truth.”

Gilbert said she anticipated Busfield would eventually share “the truth of these past allegations when he needs to”, though that time “is not now”.

“I know literally everything about him,” Gilbert also said. “He is nothing if not completely honest with me.

“He is an honorable, caring, generous human being.”

Blah, blah, blah. The problem is that, as an actor, Busfield seems quite the well-trained expert in concealing his dark side up to a point, and Gilbert is too. It sounds more like she's looking for every convenient excuse to defend him, right down to how she acts like it's virtually impossible for a husband to lie to his wife. Phyllis Chesler had the following observation to make 2 years ago about cases like these:

Many feminist trauma-related researchers and clinicians have long noted that the mothers who are married to pedophiles, including biological fathers and stepfathers who pray on pre-adolescent girls, (or boys), invariably choose the predator over their own daughters; deny that such abuse ever happened; claim that the victims are lying; and if they concede sexual acts did occur, blame it on the child herself, who is portrayed as a seductive “homewrecker,” a Lolita, even if they are under 10 years old.

Such mothers also view themselves as the real victims; resent being forced to choose between a husband whom they love and/or between a husband’s much needed paycheck and the needs of a troublesome daughter. If anything, such mothers also tend to ostracize or even exile the reporting child if she insists on continuing to talk about it or if she demands that the mother protect her.

Many incest victims in therapy are far more wounded by their mother’s betrayal than they are by their father, stepfather, or older brother’s sexual abuse. They continue to suffer this maternal failure-to-protect even more than the sexual violence itself. In part, this is also due to our society’s holding mothers to much higher expectations and punishing them for failing even a little, not to mention a lot — as well as to our complicated discomfort about and fear of being re-victimized by police or judges when we dare accuse a male of intimate of sexual violence.

Gilbert sadly appears to fall into a similar category, and she's certainly proven the whole #MeToo movement was a failure in the long run. Interestingly, the UK Guardian article refers to her as an "actor" instead of "actress", apparently perpetuating a bizarre woke modern PC position that removes gendered differences in descriptions of men and women, even in showbiz performance. It may look insulting, yet when somebody like Gilbert takes the kind of repellent standings she is now, it's hard to feel sorry.

Anyway, last month it was reported that the impending trial has cost the twosome much of their fortunes for paying legal bills:

Accused child molester Timothy Busfield is confident he'll be exonerated in court, but the finances of the former thirtysomething star – and Little House on the Prairie legend Melissa Gilbert – are taking a major hit as he fights to prove his innocence, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

The West Wing alum, 68, is reportedly worth $1million, while Gilbert, 61, is said to have $500,000 in assets.

Legal Nightmare Drains Actor’s Fortune

"This case has already cost him a fortune in legal fees. It'll run into many hundreds of thousands, and neither he nor Melissa are all that wealthy, at least not by Hollywood standards," an insider observed.

"He's already been canceled in the entertainment industry, regardless of the verdict, and they're looking at downsizing their home and retiring somewhere low-key and modest once this is eventually behind them."

Well boo hoo, go cry us an ocean. Harvey Weinstein's quite possibly lost even more, but in any event, those who commit offensive crimes have no business complaining about money, and don't deserve an ounce of it. It's also worth noting that, unlike Gilbert, when the news about Weinstein became public, the disgraced movie mogul's own wife left his side almost immediately. So why's Gilbert still making such an embarrassment of herself by contrast?

Over here, it's told that:

“I’ll let Larry get into the specifics of what happened with that part of the complaint,” Gilbert responded, turning to Busfield’s attorney, Larry Stein, who was interviewed alongside her.

“Tim did not give the boys gifts. Melissa gave them gifts,” Stein said. “Melissa gave them and every other child at a Christmas party a gift. Every child at the Christmas party. Not treating them special or different than anyone.”

And that proves beyond a reasonable doubt she wasn't involved in any kind of grooming tactic? Unfortunately, this does little to convince she knew nothing of what transpired in the past few years, or that she wasn't trying to employ a facade, and from what I noticed on the IMDB about The Cleaning Lady, it looked like he only directed 6 episodes of a series that had little more than 42 episodes produced, and it could be asked, did he have the veto power to fire them from employment if he wasn't the only director in charge? If she knew about the accusations against him before they married, how did that not raise any red flags, and didn't she realize that with such serious accusations and prior charges against him, it would be ill-advised to take actions that could be seen as trying to persuade children to confide in her abusive husband? Sorry, but her lawyer's "defense" does nothing to disprove any of this.

And in this article, the sob stories continue:

“What has this whole episode been like for you?” Stephanopoulos asks Gilbert, who replies, “Hell. This has been the most traumatizing experience of our lives.”

“Our life as we knew it is done,” she says. “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. [He’s] the last person in the world who would hurt a child. And believe me, if I thought for a second that Tim Busfield hurt a child, he'd have a lot more to worry about than prison.”

So Gilbert and Busfield are traumatized, but not his victims, huh? What was the whole point of that feud Gilbert was having with Megyn Kelly on Instagram if this is how she was going to abruptly change her positions when it came to her own third husband by contrast? On which note, she seems to have been married to Busfield longer than her 2 previous hubbies. Why? Is it because his ideological perspective is far more in sync with hers than the prior 2? I don't know, but one thing is clear. Gilbert may want to consider whether her own career is done, and come to think of it, it is, based on where she's going with Busfield. What's more, if he hopefully is convicted and incarcerated, then she'll be alone in the house for a while, and there's no use being sorry for her. She proved no better than countless other wives whose husbands turned out to be sex offenders yet refused to part ways with them, presumably because what money the abusive hubbies had was more important than justice and common sense.