JUSTICE IN PROGRESS! Survivor’s Advocacy Leads to Arrest in Decade-old Sexual Assault Case
According to The Associated Press, an American accused of sexual assault who allegedly sent spine-tingling letters to his victim is in detention in France and awaiting extradition.
The three-year international manhunt concluded in France, where Ian Thomas Cleary was seized last month as part of a police investigation, according to the Associated Press, citing a prosecutor in Metz.
Cleary, 31, of Saratoga, California, is accused of stalking an 18-year-old Gettysburg College student, sneaking into her dorm, and sexually assaulting her while she texted friends for aid. That occurred in 2013, when Cleary was a 20-year-old student at the same college. For years, officials neglected to charge Cleary, who fled the country.
Shannon Keeler, a survivor, received a Facebook message in 2020 that read, “So I raped you.”
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More weird texts followed, including “I’ll never do it to anyone ever again.”
“I need to hear your voice.”
“I’ll pray for you.”
Keeler, who came out in 2021 to seek justice for herself, spoke with The Associated Press about the messages in a May 2021 piece detailing the alleged incident. She reported the 2013 sexual assault to authorities on the same day, met with police, and had a rape examination.
However, no charges were filed. She returned to the authorities in 2020, armed with Cleary’s claimed messages, and pleaded with prosecutors to arrest him.
It wasn’t enough, so Keeler took matters into her own hands and emerged as a strong public figure in the fight against on-campus sexual assault.
In addition to the Facebook chats, she preserved dozens of social media and blog entries purportedly authored by Cleary throughout the years in Europe and presented them to the Associated Press in May 2021.
The next month, after the AP report was published, a fresh team of police and prosecutors obtained a warrant charging Cleary with the 2013 attack. However, at that time, authorities lost sight of him.
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“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 to obtain justice,” Keeler told the Associated Press in a June 29, 2021 article.
Keeler “had to push and push and put herself out there” while Cleary has “literally gone on with his life,” according to Andrea Levy, Keeler’s attorney and the legal director of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape.
“It’s hard to measure that impact on her as a human being [and on] her family, her partner,” Levy stated in June of 2017. “There is a cost. There is a serious human cost. “It is someone’s life.” Laura Dunn, Keeler’s previous lawyer, stated in a statement, “Happy to announce that former client Shannon Keeler will have her chance at justice given the recent arrest of Ian Cleary in France.”
According to a 2019 survey by the Association of American Universities, 13% of college students engage in “nonconsensual sexual contact by physical force or inability to consent”.