Victim Shannon Keeler<\/a> told the court on Monday that the messages only reopened wounds she had long carried over the assault, which went years without being prosecuted.<\/p>\n\u201cThe system meant to protect me protected you instead,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t just my story, this is the story of countless women,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Cleary faced a maximum of 10 years in prison for the attack, and the two sides had initially proposed a four- to eight-year sentence.<\/p>\n
Shannon Keeler with supporters outside the Adams County Courthouse on October 20, 2025. AP<\/p>\n
Andrea Levy, Keeler\u2019s lawyer, said the sentence was \u201cless than what we expected and certainly less than he deserves,\u201d but she said there was relief that the case was over.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Senior Judge Kevin Hess said that anyone with daughters or, like him, granddaughters in college would find the crime \u201chorrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
The wanted poster provided by US Marshals shows Ian Cleary, U.S. Marshals<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, he said, \u201cthe defendant has admitted his guilt, he\u2019s come forward and even though 10 to 11 alarming years have passed in the meantime, we wouldn\u2019t be here today but for his hope for some kind of forgiveness and contrition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cleary left Gettysburg after the attack and ultimately finished college in Silicon Valley, California, where he\u2019d grown up. He then got a master\u2019s degree and worked for Tesla before moving overseas.<\/p>\n
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,\u00a0she shared her experience\u00a0in an Associated Press story on the reluctance of prosecutors to pursue campus sex crimes.<\/p>\n
Ian Cleary is led into a police vehicle on July 17, 2025. AP<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In court Monday, Cleary, standing just a few feet away, apologized to Keeler and his father.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m committed to getting treatment for mental health and stuff like that as I go forward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cleary\u2019s family members have declined to comment on the case and did not attend most of his court hearings.<\/p>\n
Keeler, in interviews with the AP, described her repeated efforts to persuade authorities to press charges, starting hours after the assault.<\/p>\n
Ian Cleary was sentenced after sexually assaulting a woman in 2013. AP<\/p>\n
\u201cI had been thinking about this moment for 12 years,\u201d Keeler said after seeing Cleary in court in July, when he pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault. She called it a surreal moment.<\/p>\n
Authorities in the U.S. and Europe tried to\u00a0track Cleary down\u00a0after the indictment but seemed unable to follow his trail, online or otherwise, until his arrest in the unrelated case.<\/p>\n
Defense lawyer John Abom maintained that Cleary was homeless at times and unaware of the charges. Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett said he had his doubts but could not prove that Cleary was on the run.<\/p>\n
The AP typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Keeler has done.<\/p>\n
Ian Cleary was a student at Gettysburg College. AP<\/p>\n
\u201cThe system that failed me a decade ago finally delivered accountability, but at a cost. Evidence was lost. Time passed,\u201d she told the court Monday, noting that results of the rape kit she was given that night had been destroyed by the time of the indictment.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy life moved on, but the impact never went away, not for me, not for my family, not for anyone who had to watch this unfold again and again,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who sent a Facebook message that said,\u00a0\u201cSo I raped you,\u201d\u00a0to a woman he had sexually assaulted…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":321096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,4219,5333,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,2830,12650,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-321095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-crime","10":"tag-jail","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-pennsylvania","18":"tag-rape","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-us-news","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115412046280551301","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}