Melissa Gilbert: 'I Trust Him With My Children's Lives'

Melissa Gilbert says she didn't walk into her marriage to Timothy Busfield unaware of his history. In a Good Morning America interview that aired in full on Monday, the 61-year-old Little House on the Prairie star said she knew about prior sexual assault allegations against Busfield when they wed in 2013 and confronted him about them. "I didn't go into my relationship blind. I'm neither naive nor am I complicit," she told George Stephanopoulos, reports People. "I talked to him about it. I asked him questions about it. I heard his side of the story—which nobody 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."

Court records cited in Busfield's current arrest warrant reference two earlier claims: a 1990s civil suit by a 17-year-old extra on Little Big League, which was settled after he denied the allegations and countersued for extortion, and a 2012 allegation by a 28-year-old woman who accused him of groping her in a Los Angeles movie theater. Prosecutors declined to file charges in that case. Busfield, 68, is now charged in New Mexico with four counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor under 13, involving 11-year-old twin boys on the set of the Cleaning Lady on Fox.

Gilbert strongly maintained her husband's innocence. "I know this man in my bones," she said, per Variety. "No one knows him better than I do. I know literally everything about him. ... I trust him with my children's lives, I trust him with my grandchildren's lives, my nieces and nephews. He is an honorable, caring, generous human being." In a snippet of the interview released in advance, Gilbert described their lives as "hell" since Busfield's arrest.