Scientist Held in Sex Case

William French Anderson, the renowned geneticist indicted last month on charges of molesting the young daughter of a colleague at USC, was arrested Wednesday at his home in San Marino on suspicion of molesting a boy years ago in Maryland.

Douglas Friend Gansler, a state attorney in Montgomery County, Md., said Anderson had been charged with abusing the boy between September 1983, when the alleged victim was 12 years old, and September 1985.

Gansler said the molestations occurred at Anderson’s home in Bethesda, where the Harvard-trained geneticist, then a top researcher at the National Institutes of Health and a martial arts expert, was instructing the boy in taekwondo.

“During the sessions, Anderson plied the boy with alcohol and showed him magazines with [pictures of] naked women,” Gansler said.

The alleged victim’s family recently contacted police in Maryland, Gansler said. He added that investigators then recorded a telephone conversation during which the purported victim confronted Anderson with his allegations. Officials did not disclose any details of the conversation.

Anderson, 68, was charged Tuesday in Maryland with child abuse, sexual assault and “unnatural and perverted sex practices.” An arrest warrant was issued, and he was taken into custody by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies Wednesday and booked at the Temple City sheriff’s station.

In the California case, Anderson had been training the alleged victim in karate at his San Marino home. Founder of the Gene Therapy Laboratories at USC, he is accused of molesting the girl, now 17, from 1997 to 2001.

In that case, Anderson was indicted on one count of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14 and five counts of a lewd act upon a child. He pleaded not guilty to all six counts. His preliminary hearing is today.

After that indictment, Anderson e-mailed friends at USC, saying, “I have not done the things I am charged with.”

The university has placed him on administrative leave.

Anderson was dubbed the father of gene therapy after a team he led in 1990 cured a hereditary disease of the immune system in a 4-year-old girl. The child was infused with a missing gene and with white cells that had been removed from her blood. It was the first time that the therapy was successful in a human being.

Anderson’s achievement guaranteed him a place in medical history, but it also made him a lightning rod in the controversy over the ethics of gene manipulation. He reportedly received several death threats because of his work.