February 04, 2007	Sunday	Muharram 15, 1428

LOS ANGELES, Feb 3: A top US scientist known as the “father of gene therapy” was sentenced on Friday to 14 years in prison for molesting a young girl after his victim told the court that the sex abuse nearly drove her to suicide.

William French Anderson, who won international acclaim for his work as a geneticist, was convicted in July of sexually abusing the girl, who is now 19, when she was 9.

Anderson denied the charges at trial and his lawyers argued that he was guilty only of pressuring the girl to do well in school. The 70-year-old scientist resigned in September from the University of Southern California Gene Therapy Laboratories.—Reuters