Man Who Messaged 'So I Raped You' To Victim Sentenced To Prison

GETTYSBURG, PA — A man with ties to Baltimore was sentenced to prison on Monday for sexually assaulting a woman at the college where they were both students and then sending her a Facebook message saying, "So I raped you," several years later, according to multiple reports.

Ian Cleary, 32, will serve two to four years in prison after he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting 30-year-old Shannon Keeler, according to a New York Times report citing the Adams County District Attorney's Office in Pennsylvania.

Patch typically does not identify victims of sexual assault; however, Keeler has come forward and spoken publicly about her experience on numerous occasions.

Cleary will also be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, reports said. Cleary pleaded guilty in July.

Cleary's sentence came more than a year after he was extradited to Pennsylvania from France to face charges in the 2013 assault at Gettysburg College and nearly 12 years after the victim first went to police.

Keeler told police that Cleary sneaked into her dorm on the eve of winter break, when few people were left on campus, then pushed his way into her room and assaulted her. She was an 18-year-old in her first semester on campus at the time.

Keeler previously told The Associated Press that authorities told her it would be difficult to prosecute a sexual assault when the alleged victim had been drinking. Her lawyer at the time later told The Washington Post that Gettysburg police responded to Keeler with “victim-blaming and indifference.”

Cleary left Gettysburg after the attack and ultimately finished college in Silicon Valley, California, where he’d grown up. He also spent time at his mother's home in Baltimore, according to an Associated Press report. He then got a master’s degree and worked for Tesla before moving overseas.

In 2019, he sent the Facebook message to Keeler, and she renewed her efforts with police and prosecutors after noticing them a few months later. In 2021, she shared her experience in an Associated Press story on the reluctance of prosecutors to pursue campus sex crimes.

Cleary was indicted weeks after the AP story was published, and following a three-year search, he was extradited from Metz, France, where he had been detained on a vagrancy-related charge in April 2024.

In court Monday, Cleary, standing just a few feet away, apologized to Keeler and his father.

“I’m committed to getting treatment for mental health and stuff like that as I go forward,” he said.

Keeler also spoke in court, stating how the messages only reopened wounds she had long carried over the assault.

“The system meant to protect me protected you instead,” said Keeler, detailing in a powerful 10-minute impact statement the years she spent pursuing charges, which prosecutors are often reluctant to file in campus sexual assault cases.

“This isn’t just my story, this is the story of countless women,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.