American college rape suspect is being extradited to the US

A California resident is being extradited back to the U.S. Thursday after allegedly sexually assaulting a Pennsylvania college student in 2013 and then reportedly messaging her on Facebook “So I raped you” years later.

Ian Cleary, who was wanted by the U.S. Marshals Service, was handed over to American authorities today at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France, prosecutors told The Associated Press.

Cleary, 31, of Saratoga, California, was detained in April in Metz after a three-year search. He has been held in custody pending extradition proceedings since his arrest. The Appeal Court in Metz ruled in July that he could be extradited.

An arrest warrant accuses Cleary of stalking an 18-year-old Gettysburg College student at a party in 2013, 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 didn’t return to campus.

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The accuser, Shannon Keeler, had a rape exam done the same day. She gathered witnesses and evidence and spent years urging officials to file charges. She went to the authorities again in 2021 after discovering Facebook messages that seemed to come from Cleary’s account.

“So I raped you,” the sender wrote in a string of messages.

“I’ll never do it to anyone ever again,” “I need to hear your voice,” and “I’ll pray for you,” read some of the other messages.

According to the June 2021 warrant, police verified that the Facebook account used to send the messages belonged to Cleary. He allegedly sent the messages in 2020 while Keeler and her boyfriend were on a weekend trip.

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In 2023, Andrea Levy, Keeler’s attorney and the legal director for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, said her client has “had to push and push and put herself out there” while Cleary has “literally gone on with his life.”

“It’s hard to measure that impact on her as a human being [and on] her family, her partner,” Levy said at the time. “There’s a cost. There’s a real human cost. It’s someone’s life.”

Cleary left Gettysburg College and went on to graduate from Santa Clara University, worked for Tesla, then moved to France for several years, according to his blog, which touts his self-published medieval fiction.