by The longtime medical coordinator of the now-closed Agape Boarding School is behind bars following his arrest Thursday night on charges of kidnapping and four sex crimes.
Scott Dumar, 46, was arrested at 8:20 p.m. by police in Bolivar, southwest Missouri. According to a booking document, he is being held at the Polk County Jail. No bond is mentioned.
The alleged crimes on the booking information are second degree sodomy, second degree kidnapping and three counts of second degree sexual misconduct. There are no details about what led to the arrest.
“Right now I’m preparing charges,” Keaton Ashlock, the Polk County prosecutor, said Friday morning.
As of late 2020, Agape has come under scrutiny from Missouri law enforcement, child welfare officials, legislators, and former students. Several of those students testified in Jefferson City in 2021 urging lawmakers to do something about the years of abuse and protect the children still in school. As a result, legislators passed a law that implemented some of the regulations in such schools for the first time.
Dumar is a former Agape student who became one of the top employees of the unlicensed Christian boarding school as an adult. He was also one of five employees charged with minor felonies in 2021, accused of physically abusing boys.
In December, Dumar pleaded guilty to two counts and was placed on two years’ probation. He was initially charged with four counts of third-degree assault, a Class E misdemeanor. All charges involved former students.
Those allegations alleged that between February 2020 and April 2021, Dumar knowingly physically harmed three boys by scrubbing their arms with rubbing alcohol and a scouring pad to remove their tattoos.
Two 18-year-olds testified in December that they bled when Dumar scrubbed off the tattoos they had given themselves with a pencil and ink, which Agape considered self-harm and a violation of the rules. One of them, who had been in school for four months, said a classmate had put a cross tattoo on one of his fingers during lunch.
When Dumar removed it, the boy testified, he used the rough side of a sponge usually used to wash dishes and dipped it in a tub of rubbing alcohol. The teenager remembered it as “very” painful.
Dumar was also named in a civil lawsuit brought by a former student alleging mistreatment at the boarding school. The lawsuit was one of many settled over the past year.
In a March/April 2020 Agape newsletter, Dumar features and describes his time at school. He became a student of the school at age 17 when it was located in Washington State and remained until graduating a year later.
He said he started working at Agape in June 1995. The following year, Agape moved to Stockton in Cedar County. And Dumar worked there until the closure.
In January, former principal Bryan Clemensen announced that he would voluntarily close the school.
The closure came as the Missouri Attorney General’s Office said it planned to proceed with its petition for a court order to close the school.
“Over the past 30 years, Agape Boarding School has given more than 6,000 boys the chance to get their lives back on track and a bright future ahead,” Clemensen said in a press release. “Agape has made the decision to stop providing services to the boys under its care effective January 20, 2023. Agape’s focus is on safely transitioning the boys who remain in the program to their parents or to foster homes, other group homes or residential programs.”
Dumar worked closely with David Smock, Agape’s former longtime physician who is dealing with 12 child crime cases in Cedar County, including multiple counts of legal sodomy, sexual misconduct, child molestation and child seduction. Missouri Attorney General’s Office prosecutors are leading that case, which originated in Cedar County but is now in Dade County, but is now changing locations.
Smock is being held without bond at the Cedar County Jail.
