William French Anderson: World-Renowned Scientist Sentenced for Molesting Girl

William French Anderson has often been referred to as "the father of gene therapy" because of his work on a controversial medical treatment, promising but still in experimental phases. In 1990, Anderson claimed to be the first person to treat a patient successfully with the treatment, which involves injecting sick patients with healthy genes from donors. In 1995, Time Magazine named him as a runner-up for their annual "Man of the Year" issue. The following year, his claims were found to have been exaggerated.

Anderson, 70, is no longer the man of the year. He was sentenced Friday to serve 14 years in prison for molesting the daughter of one of his employees. He could have been sentenced to up to 22 years behind bars. Many people, including a Nobel Prize winner and other notable scientists, wrote letters to the court in support of Anderson, who has a genius level IQ of 176.

However, Judge Michael Pastor said that Anderson’s actions resulted in "incalculable" emotional devastation to a girl whom he described as being an insecure and trusting immigrant. "Because of intellectual arrogance, he persisted and he got away with as much as he could," the judge said.

The girl, now 19, took martial arts classes from Anderson at his home as a child. Last July a jury convicted Anderson of child molestation. Prosecutors said that he had molested the girl for four years, from 1997 until 2001, beginning when she was 10 years old. In February 2005, Anderson was also charged in Montgomery County, Maryland with molesting a 12-year-old Silver Spring, Maryland boy for three years in the 1980s.

Before the sentence was handed down, Anderson’s victim was allowed to read a statement to the court. "Roughly three years ago, I wanted to kill myself," she said. "I couldn’t live with all the pain…He maliciously destroyed my world to fulfill his own sick pleasures."

Anderson’s defense attorneys argued during the trial that he had been only a friendly mentor to the girl, and that the charges were part of a smear campaign launched by her mother, who wanted to take over Anderson’s position at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine as director of the Gene Therapies Laboratories. Anderson resigned from the university in September.

During the trial, prosecutors played for jurors a tape-recorded conversation between Anderson and the girl, where she confronted him about his actions. On the tape, Anderson said, "I just did it, just something in me was evil." In his testimony, Anderson explained that he thought the girl was confronting him about the emotional abuse he might have caused because of pressuring her to study hard and do well in school.

"If you cause somebody to crash, flunk out, that’s just evil," he said.