https://www.columbiatribune.com/news/20191213/sex-offender-expert-charged-with-molesting-children
A Columbia forensic psychologist and leader in the field of sex offender management is now accused of molesting two children in two Missouri counties.
Kurt M. Bumby, 50, was charged with two counts of statutory sodomy Thursday in Boone County, adding to two counts of the sodomy filed in November in St. Louis County. The allegations against Bumby come from two victims and involve incidents in Boone and St Louis County over a span of three decades.
Bumby is represented by Clayton criminal defense attorney Joel Schwartz, who said Friday he had only seen what was in the accusations and those would be addressed in the appropriate venue.
Bond was set at $100,000 cash-only in both the Boone County and St. Louis County cases. Online court records do not show that he has been arrested for either set of charges.
In the Boone County case, Cpl. E.T. Bartel of the Missouri State Highway Patrol in September interviewed one of the victims, who told the officer that, as a middle school student, he played sports with Bumby’s children and their families formed a relationship, according to charging documents.
The victim would often spend the night at Bumby’s residence in Columbia, Bartel wrote in the affidavit. Between the years 2008 and 2015, Bumby allegedly sodomized the child at multiple times at Bumby’s home.
The case involving the St. Louis child dates 1988 to 1994, while Bumby was a student and graduate student at the University of Missouri and again stemmed from a relationship he had with the victim’s family.
Bartel wrote that in May he spoke with the victim in that case, who told the officer that while he was in middle school Bumby began a relationship with his mother. Bumby, then a student, would come to the victim’s home on the weekends and throughout the summers. Not long after trust had been built, the abuse began, according to the affidavit.
The victim told Bartel that Bumby would come sleep in the bed with him when it was dark and others had retired for the evening. During those encounters, Bumby would allegedly place his hands in the child’s pants, molesting him. The abuse occurred several times at the victim’s home in St. Louis County and at Bumby’s residence in St. Charles, the victim told Bartel.
Bumby is a prominent expert on sex offender management. From 2003 to the present — and during much of the time the alleged abuse was taking place — Bumby has been as a senior associate with the Center for Effective Public Policy, a position in which he discussed with and presented to judges, state officials and policymakers across the nation trends in the rehabilitation and recidivism of sex offenders. As part of his duties, he has been the director of the Center for Sex Offender Management.
A call to Susan Gibel, chief operating officer of the center, was not immediately returned. The nonprofit’s website as of Friday lists him as a current member of the program staff.
Bumby has also worked for the state, beginning with a post as a psychologist at Fulton State Hospital in 1997 and working as a principal assistant to the director of the Division of Youth Services in the period from about 1999 to 2003.
As a graduate student at MU, Bumby in 1994 he received the Graduate Research Award for Research Excellence in the Field of Sex Offender Treatment from the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. In 1996, he was a co-recipient of the Hugo G. Beigel Research Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.
