Scientist sentenced to 14 years in sexual abuse case
By Peter Y. Hong, Times Staff Writer

William French Anderson, one of the world's most acclaimed scientists for his work on gene therapy, was sentenced today to 14 years in prison for sexually abusing a girl whose mother worked in his USC lab.
Anderson had faced a maximum sentence of 18 years for his conviction on four counts of continuous sexual abuse and lewd acts toward a child younger than 14.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR THE RECORD:
Sentencing: Earlier versions of this story stated that the maximum sentence William French Anderson could have received was 22 years. The maximum was 18 years. —

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael E. Pastor handed down the sentence, rejecting the 70-year-old researcher's arguments that his imprisonment would deprive humanity of the benefits of his medical efforts. Several prominent scientists wrote to support Anderson's argument, which failed to sway Pastor. "I wish they had seen the evidence," the judge said at the sentencing. "You had a choice to stop and you didn't because of intellectual arrogance. You persisted and got away with as much as you could," the judge said. "It was aggravated, despicable misconduct as far as I'm concerned."

Anderson, 70, looked at the judge without emotion. His hair was longer than it was during the trial. Anderson's victim, who had flown in from the prestigious Midwestern college she now attends, took the stand. "I thought the pain that led me to cut my body, to consider suicide, was my fault," the girl testified. "He took away years of my childhood. I can never get those years back." Anderson had been a coach and mentor to the girl since she was 9. Her mother, Anderson's second-in-command at his USC laboratory, had asked him to help the girl, who had few friends and was acting up in school.

An accomplished martial artist, Anderson taught the girl karate and later drove her to soccer and softball practices. She claimed that Anderson first abused her shortly after they met. He touched her crotch as she playfully swung on a heavy punching bag at his San Marino house, she testified. The abuse continued for five years. Anderson had the girl undress for medical exams at his house. When she grew into an adolescent, Anderson had her undress to her underwear and lie on a towel on his bed, she said. He thrust himself on her until he ejaculated, she testified.

In high school, she decided to cooperate with police after a school counselor got her to confide that she had been abused. Wearing a police wire, she faced down Anderson in 2004 outside a library in South Pasadena. The recording of that confrontation, in which she angrily berated Anderson and asked, "Why did you molest me?" was played in the courtroom during last year's trial. Then 67, Anderson told the girl, 17 at the time, "I will love you forever."

In that recorded encounter, Anderson did not acknowledge molesting the girl, but apologized generally and said, "Something inside me was evil." When she asked him to turn himself in, he said doing so would hurt "all the people who ironically look up to me as a model of the right way to live, people in Oklahoma [his native state]." Also presented during Anderson's trial were e-mails he wrote to the girl begging to see her, and one in which he warned the teenager he might kill himself.

"If I saw you and your whole family destroyed, and my whole career down the tubes, and all the thousands of people abandoned who would have been helped by cures your mother and I are developing, then I can understand what would drive a person to suicide.... For me, a powerful 9-millimeter bullet through the side of the head would be the way to go," he wrote. Before he was accused of molesting the girl in 2004, Anderson had been among the few scientists who achieve something close to public celebrity status. He was featured in lengthy profiles in national magazines and newspapers, including The Times. In the late 1980s, Anderson and his collaborators performed an experimental implant of a harmless bacterial gene into a human. Journalists compared that scientific achievement with jet airplanes breaking the sound barrier.

Then, in September 1990, Anderson and two colleagues implanted a healthy gene to correct 4-year-old Ashanti DeSilva's defective immune system. Whether the operation or later medical treatment saved DeSilva's life is now in dispute. The media then hailed Anderson as the man who bested nature, the closest thing to playing God. But critics said Anderson took too much credit for achievements in which other scientists shared.

Anderson left the National Institutes of Health in 1992 for USC. His wife, an accomplished surgeon who felt she was passed over for a chairmanship because of her gender, had been made surgery chairperson at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. The Andersons said they chose not to have children to devote themselves to medicine. Anderson's sex abuse charges followed other setbacks. By 2003, his USC lab had lost most of its funding. Gene therapy had not lived up to the expectations that followed Anderson's early success.

After he was charged in Los Angeles, a Maryland man claimed that Anderson had molested him 20 years earlier. Anderson was charged then with abusing the boy, but Maryland prosecutors dropped the case. Anderson resigned his USC faculty post in September of 2006.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
peter.hong@latimes.com