GETTYSBURG, Pa. (AP) — An American extradited from France to face charges that he sexually assaulted a fellow Pennsylvania college student in 2013 — and later sent her a Facebook message that said “So I raped you” — pleaded guilty Thursday.
Ian Cleary, 32, pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault more than a decade after Shannon Keeler says he sneaked into her first-year dorm at Gettysburg College on the eve of winter break and assaulted her. Cleary’s guilty plea was the first time she’d seen him since the assault.
“I had been thinking about this moment for 12 years,” said Keeler, who clenched her husband’s hand as Cleary was led into court by deputies. She called it a surreal moment. A decade ago, a former prosecutor had declined the case.
“It’s taken a lot of twists and turns to get to this point,” said Keeler, now 30. “It took a lot of people doing the right thing to get us here.”
Judge Kevin Hess set an Oct. 20 sentencing date. The two sides proposed a four- to eight-year sentence, which the judge can accept or not.
Keeler, in interviews with The Associated Press, described her decade-long efforts to persuade authorities to pursue charges, starting hours after the assault.
She renewed the quest in 2021, after finding a series of disturbing Facebook messages from his account.
Cleary has been in custody since his arrest on minor, unrelated charges in Metz, France, in April 2024. A defense lawyer told the judge Thursday that Cleary experienced several mental health episodes there and was hospitalized around the time he sent the Facebook messages in 2019.
Cleary left Gettysburg after the assault and finished college in Silicon Valley, California, where he’d grown up. He then got a master’s degree and worked for Tesla before moving overseas, where he spent time writing medieval fiction, according to his online posts.
The AP published an investigation on the case and on the broader reluctance among prosecutors to pursue campus sex assault charges in May 2021. An indictment followed weeks later.
Authorities in the U.S. and Europe tried to track Cleary down for the next three years, but seemed unable to follow his trail, online or otherwise.
In court Thursday, defense lawyer John Abom said Cleary was homeless at times and unaware of the charges. Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett on Thursday said he has his doubts, but cannot prove that Cleary was on the run, so it’s unlikely to be an issue at sentencing.
The second-degree sexual assault charge carries a maximum 10 years in prison. His family members have declined to comment on the case and have not attended his court hearings. Abom also declined to comment on Cleary’s behalf Thursday.
The AP typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Keeler has done.
“I hope that we as a society, the institutions around us, can make truly successful legal outcomes more viable for victims,” she said after the plea.
“It starts with listening to victims and making sure their voices are heard,” she said, “even if the system’s slow to catch up.”
