WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

John Pilmaier was 7, a second-grader at St. John Vianney School in 1977, when Father David Hanser walked into his classroom and asked for a volunteer to help him with a project.

Several children raised their hands, Pilmaier says, but he was chosen.

And so they walked, Father Dave and John, to the rectory that the priest called home. Once there, Hanser sexually assaulted the boy, then warned him not to tell anyone, saying his parents would be angry with him.

John Pilmaier is the final entry, just three lines, in the history of the now-defrocked Hanser, which was released Monday with thousands of pages of documents as part of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy proceeding.

Hanser’s file recounts what Pilmaier and his parents had already come to suspect: that their once-trusted parish priest may have sexually assaulted…