Document trail: John P. Treder

John P. Treder was a scoutmaster accused of molesting a boy in his troop while at a southeastern Wisconsin Scout camp on a July night in 1968. But the details of his misconduct would remain a Scout secret for more than two decades, surfacing only in 1991. 

Treder lay on the boy’s bunk and “touched me between my legs several times and again asked me if I liked it. I said ‘no,’ ” the boy wrote in a statement to Scout officials a week later. “At first I trusted him because I liked him. Then he said if he could kiss me again, he would go, so I let him.”

That incident got Treder removed from Scouting, but there was no report to police. Treder later wrote to the Scout executive who handled his removal, thanking him for “keeping everything in confidence.”

Treder went on to oversee altar boys’ training at a Catholic Church in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis, where he was charged with assaulting a 10-year-old in 1989. Only then did police learn of the earlier incident with Scouts.