Top US scientist gets 14 yrs for child sex abuse

Los Angeles, Feb 3: A US scientist known as the ''father of gene therapy'' was sentenced to 14 years in prison for molesting a girl to whom he taught karate.

William French Anderson, 70, who won international renown for his work as a geneticist, was convicted in July of sexually abusing the girl over several years starting when she was 9 or 10 years old.

Anderson denied the charges at trial and his lawyers argued that he was guilty only of pressuring the girl to do well in school. Anderson resigned in September from his work at the University of Southern California Gene Therapy Laboratories.

The sentence was handed down in Los Angeles Superior Court yesterday.

Prosecutors said Anderson, a fifth-degree black belt in tae kwon do who served as a physician for US Olympic teams in the 1980s, began abusing the girl while teaching her martial arts at his Los Angeles area home. He was arrested after she told a counselor she was being abused.

The victim, who is now 19, testified in court that Anderson touched her private parts as she was hanging from a punching bag. He later performed ''medical exams'' when she was naked and would thrust on top of her as she lay reading a comic book.

During the trial, prosecutors played a tape-recorded conversation in which the victim accused Anderson of molesting her. He is heard to respond: ''I just did it. Something in me was just evil.'' The former professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and pediatrics had been the subject of glowing profiles in the press and was once considered for Time magazine's ''Man of the Year.''

Reuters