Scientist in Sexual Abuse Case Hears Recordings in Courtroom

A renowned scientist sat expressionless Monday as prosecutors played recordings of a conversation that they said amounted to an admission that he sexually abused the daughter of a lab colleague over a five-year period.

The recordings were part of the prosecution’s closing arguments in the trial of USC scientist William French Anderson.

As his voice resounded through the courtroom, Anderson, silver-haired and stone-faced, held his left hand up near his chin, his clenched fingers showing his wedding band. His wife, a retired surgeon, looked to the floor, her hands tucked into the sleeves of her cardigan.

“It gets worse as I grow older,” the accuser says in the recording. “When I go to sleepovers, as girls, we talk. I can’t. I don’t know what to do.” Anderson answers pleadingly, “What can I say, I did a horrible thing that ruined your life. What can I do?”

In profanity-laced outbursts, the girl recalls alleged incidents in which Anderson had her strip naked at his house. Anderson apologizes repeatedly without mentioning specifics, then offers the girl a ride.

When the playback stopped, one juror wiped his eyes. Prosecutor Cathryn Brougham told the jury “you will not get a stronger case of molestation,” calling Anderson’s alleged crime “harm that will never go away. Short of taking someone’s life, this is as horrendous as it gets.”

But Anderson’s lawyer, Barry Tarlow, told jurors that what really was horrendous was the smearing of a scientist sometimes called “the father of gene therapy.” Tarlow said Anderson had been a father figure and mentor to the girl, and, if anything, is guilty of pushing her too hard to succeed as a student and athlete.

The recorded apology, Tarlow said, had nothing to do with sexual abuse. “Shouldn’t he apologize if she crashed because of emotional abuse?” Tarlow said.

As he argued during the trial, Tarlow said the victim was motivated by financial gain, noting that she contacted lawyers at a high-powered law firm early in the case. Tarlow also pointed out contradictions in statements the girl made in court and to investigators or counselors. Tarlow noted, for instance, that she said Anderson, who coached her in taekwondo, groped her while they worked out with a punching bag; on one occasion she said the incident occurred in the garage of Anderson’s house, and on another she said it happened in his backyard.

Tarlow argued during the trial that the girl’s mother, who was second in command at Anderson’s lab, was trying to smear him to usurp his position. He repeated the assertion in his closing argument, saying she hoped Anderson would have to resign, leaving her interim director and in a strong position to win the job permanently.

Anderson is accused of molesting the girl beginning in 1997, when she was 10 and Anderson was 60. The abuse allegedly began during Saturday morning taekwondo lessons at his San Marino home.

Tarlow said abuse could not have occurred because Anderson’s wife and the girl’s mother and sister were often present at the lessons, which prosecutors disputed.

Neither side disputes that Anderson and his accuser had a close relationship. Anderson bought the girl and her twin sister bicycles for Christmas. He helped them get into a summer program at Stanford University and monitored the accuser’s progress in geometry class with her teacher. Anderson bought the girl’s prom dress and allowed her and her sister to host a sleepover party for their friends at his house. He also bought her meals at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena and at a restaurant in San Marino.

Tarlow said those ties showed the father-like mentor relationship Anderson innocently maintained with the girl. Brougham said the gifts and support were calculated manipulations by Anderson to set up his abuse.

Tarlow said the brilliant Anderson might have sometimes acted stupidly. “Nothing about having a 176 IQ means you have good judgment” socially, Tarlow said.

One example of poor judgment was an e-mail Anderson sent the girl. In it, he ponders suicide and the harm it could cause humanity: “My whole career could go down the tubes and thousands of people could be abandoned who could be helped by cures your mother and I are developing.”

Anderson wrote: a “Black Talon 9mm bullet is said to be able to blow half your brain out of the other side of your skull. Just in case, I have bought the ammunition.”

Brougham said such statements help explain the girl’s reluctance to come forward and the contradictions in her statements. Tarlow said the e-mail showed that Anderson was “worried things were going to go public; he does not know what they are.” The e-mail, Tarlow said, was “dumb, he shouldn’t have done it, but it doesn’t prove a crime.”

Closing arguments were to conclude today.