Melissa Gilbert’s Ex-Husband Called Child Protective Services on Her, Claiming Her Nanny Abused Their Son
Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert and her first husband, Bo Brinkman, did not have an amicable divorce. Shortly after Gilbert began dating who would eventually be her second husband, Bruce Boxleitner, Brinkman filed a report with Child Protective Services stating that Gilbert’s nanny was abusing their son. Gilbert says the investigation couldn’t have come at a worse time, when she was recovering from a “boob job.”
When Melissa Gilbert learned her ex filed a report with Child Protective Services
Gilbert was on a ski trip in Austria with Boxleitner when she learned Brinkman had contacted Child Protective Services, claiming that her nanny had abused their son.
“Apparently the guy who took care of my animals said he had witnessed it when I wasn’t around,” Gilbert wrote in her 2009 memoir, Prairie Tale. “It didn’t seem possible to me. But as I said to Bruce, what if it was true?”
Melissa Gilbert ‘became hysterical’
“I burned up the long-distance phone lines, trying to regain control of the situation,” she wrote. “If Bo’s intention was to make me crazy, he did a good job. I downed glasses of wine and schnapps. I took my frustration out on Bruce. We got into one of our big knockdown, drag-out fights and didn’t speak to each other for two solid days.”
The Little House actor “was a mess” until she returned home from her trip. Upon arrival, she fired the nanny, contacted her lawyer, “and waited for more bad news.”
‘I looked like the psycho, junkie actress who got new tits for Christmas’
Around the same time, Gilbert “went into the hospital for some elective surgery.”
“Okay, I went in for a boob job,” she admitted.
She thought about postponing the surgery with everything going on, but “thought new boobs would make me feel better.” So she went through with it.
“So I had the surgery, and two days later, the investigator from Child Protective Services showed up at the house to interview me,” she wrote. “Her timing couldn’t have been worse. When she arrived, I was in the midst of having a severe reaction to the pain medication and residual anesthesia. I wanted this woman to think I was normal and my home was a paradigm of well-being. Instead, I looked like the psycho, junkie actress who got new tits for Christmas.”
Even so, the report was dropped.
“The complaint went away after her investigation, as it should have,” wrote Gilbert. “There was no story. It was bullsh*t.”
