LYON, France — While a freshman at Gettysburg College in 2013, Shannon Keeler says she was raped by Ian Cleary, who she says followed her home
Shannon Keeler was floored when she read a Facebook message from a man she had accused of sexually assaulting her in 2013 when she was a freshman in college.
“I need to hear your voice,” Ian Cleary, now 31, of Saratoga, California, allegedly wrote to her in a 2019 message she discovered in 2020, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by PEOPLE. “I need to know if I did it or not.”
In an even more chilling message, he allegedly wrote, “So I raped you.”
Keeler had spent years trying to convince authorities to arrest the upperclassman she accused of raping her when they were both students at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pa., to no avail.
After receiving the Facebook messages from Cleary, she notified police, but nothing happened. In 2021, she also spoke to the Associated Press for a story about how difficult it is to prosecute sex crimes on college campuses.
Weeks later, Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett filed a felony arrest warrant charging Cleary with sexual assault.
Now, after a three-year search, a prosecutor in Metz, France, confirmed on Tuesday that Cleary has been detained since April 24 after being taken into custody as part of a police check, the AP and The New York Times report.
He is being held in French custody pending extradition proceedings, the AP reports.
An attorney for Cleary did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.
Keeler’s attorney, Andrea Levy, declined to comment on the arrest.
Shannon Keeler poses for a portrait in the United States on Wednesday, April 7, 2021. An American accused of sexually assaulting Keeler at a Pennsylvania college in 2013 and later sending her a Facebook message that said, “So I raped you,” has been detained in France after a three-year search. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)
In 2021, after the warrant was issued for Cleary’s arrest, Keeler said in a statement shared with PEOPLE through her attorney, Laura Dunn, that “While I am moved to tears by this result, which I have waited for (for) over seven years, I am mindful that this moment came because I went public with my story, which no survivor should have to do in order to obtain justice.”
Keeler’s ordeal began on Dec. 15, 2013, when she had a friend walk her back to her dorm after a party to celebrate finals, where a “kid” had been “creeping her out,” the affidavit alleges.
The kid, later identified as Cleary, who was 20 at the time, allegedly followed her and her friend back to the dorm, offering the friend $20 so he could be alone with Keeler, according to the affidavit.
The friend told Cleary to go away, the affidavit says. Ten minutes later, Keeler heard a knock on the door and opened it thinking it was another friend, the affidavit says. It was Cleary, who walked in, began kissing Keeler before assaulting her, the affidavit alleges.
Keeler texted friends saying, “Help please” and “OMG please Help me,” before the alleged assault, according to the affidavit.
Keeler reported the alleged attack to police, underwent a rape kit test and found witnesses who saw Cleary that night, the affidavit says.
Authorities reopened the case after Keeler told them about the online messages and after the AP story about her case ran.
Police linked Cleary’s Facebook account with a matching cell phone number.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.
Read the original article on People.
By K.C. BAKER/People
A prosecutor in Metz, France, confirmed Tuesday that Ian Thomas Cleary, 31, of Saratoga, California, had been taken into custody last month and will be held pending extradition proceedings.
Cleary had been the subject of an international search since authorities in Pennsylvania issued a 2021 felony warrant in the case weeks after an Associated Press story detailed the reluctance of local prosecutors to pursue campus sex crimes.
The arrest warrant accuses Cleary of stalking an 18-year-old Gettysburg College student at a party, sneaking into her dorm and sexually assaulting her while she texted friends for help. He was a 20-year-old Gettysburg student at the time, but did not return to campus.
According to a French judicial official, Cleary was detained on the street in Metz on April 24 as part of a police check. He told a magistrate that he had “arrived in France two or three years ago” from Albania and had only recently come to Metz, but did not have housing there, the official said. A French lawyer appointed to represent him did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Tuesday.
Cleary, according to his online posts, had previously spent time in France and also has ties to California and Maryland. His father is a tech executive in Silicon Valley, while his mother has lived in Baltimore. Neither he nor his parents have returned repeated phone and email messages left by the AP, including calls to his parents on Tuesday.
The Gettysburg accuser, Shannon Keeler, had a rape exam done the same day she was assaulted in 2013. She gathered witnesses and evidence and spent years urging officials to file charges. She went to authorities again in 2021 after discovering the Facebook messages that seemed to come from Cleary’s account.
“So I raped you,” the sender had written in a string of messages.
“I’ll never do it to anyone ever again.”
“I need to hear your voice.”
“I’ll pray for you.”
According to the June 2021 warrant, police verified that the Facebook account used to send the messages belonged to Ian Cleary. Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett, who filed it, did not immediately return a call Tuesday.
The AP does not typically name people who say they are sexual assault victims without their permission, which Keeler has granted. Her lawyer, reached Tuesday, had no immediate comment on Cleary’s detention.
After leaving Gettysburg, Cleary earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Santa Clara University, near his family home in California, worked for Tesla, then moved to France for several years, according to his website, which describes his self-published medieval fiction.
Keeler, originally from Moorestown, New Jersey, stayed on to graduate from Gettysburg and help lead the women’s lacrosse team to a national title.
By 2023, two years after the warrant was filed, Keeler and her lawyers wondered how he was avoiding capture in the age of digital tracking. The U.S. Marshals Service thought he was likely overseas and on the move, even as he was the subject of an Interpol alert called a red notice.
Across the U.S., very few campus rapes are prosecuted, both because victims fear going to police and prosecutors hesitate to bring cases that can be hard to win, the AP investigation found.
Keeler, when the warrant was issued, said she was grateful, but knew it only happened “because I went public with my story, which no survivor should have to do in order to obtain justice.”
