Posted on 02/21/2005 7:08:46 PM PST by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A renowned University of Southern California gene therapy scientist accused of molesting two children over the past 20 years posted bond and was released from jail, authorities said Monday.
William French Anderson, 68, was released shortly after 5 a.m. on bond, according to the county Sheriff's Department Web site. No other information was immediately released.
Anderson is accused of molesting a girl he instructed in martial arts between 1997 and 2001. He has pleaded not guilty to a count of continuous sexual abuse of a child under age 14 and five counts of committing a lewd act upon a child in that case.
Anderson was arrested last week on new charges that he molested a boy, who was then 12, at his home in Bethesda, Md., from 1983 to 1985. A spokesman for the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland has said Anderson met the boy at a martial arts studio in Cloverly, Md., where he had worked as an assistant instructor, and took the boy to his house to tutor him.
The four counts in Maryland include custodial abuse, second-degree sex offense, third-degree sex offense and perverted practice. Authorities do not know how many times the boy, now in his early 30s, was allegedly molested.
Anderson, who has a fifth-degree black belt in tae kwon do, has been placed on administrative leave as director of the Gene Therapies Laboratories at USC's Keck School of Medicine.
Considered the "father of gene therapy," Anderson has published hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and won numerous awards for his work. He was Time magazine's runner-up for Man of the Year in 1995.
Trouble distinguishing between genes, jeans, Genes, and Jeans? He needs to stick to chromosomes.
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