An American who sent a Facebook message to a sexual assault victim saying “so I raped you” is finally arrested in France after two years on the run

• Ian Thomas Cleary, 31, of Saratoga, California, has been on the loose for two years.
• He is accused of sexually assaulting Shannon Keeler when she was 18 in 2013.
• Cleary was finally arrested last month in Metz, France, authorities said.

An alleged American sex offender who sent his victim a message saying “so I raped you” on Facebook was finally arrested in France after two years on the run.

Ian Thomas Cleary, 31, of Saratoga, California, is accused of assaulting Pennsylvania student Shannon Keeler in her dorm room in December 2013.

Cleary was arrested in Metz, northeastern France, on April 24, authorities confirmed Tuesday. He will be detained there pending extradition proceedings.

The allegations against Cleary sparked a global search after authorities in Pennsylvania issued a felony arrest warrant in 2021 accusing him of stalking Keeler.

The arrest warrant accuses him of sneaking into Keeler’s dorm room at Gettysburg College and sexually assaulting her while she sent frantic text calls for help.

According to a French judicial official, Cleary was arrested in the street in Metz on April 24 as part of a police check.

He told a magistrate that he “arrived in France two or three years ago” from Albania and that he had only recently arrived in Metz, but that there was no accommodation, the official said.

A French lawyer appointed to represent him did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment Tuesday.

Cleary, according to his online postings, had previously spent time in France and also has ties to California and Maryland.

Her father is a technology executive in Silicon Valley, while her mother lived in Baltimore.

Gettysburg accuser Shannon Keeler underwent a rape examination on the same day of her 2013 assault.

She gathered witnesses and evidence and spent years urging authorities to press charges.

But it wasn’t until she realized Cleary had sent her the chilling message on Facebook that she went to authorities again in 2021, and they launched a search.

“So I raped you,” the sender wrote in a series of messages in December 2019. “I will never do it to anyone again,” he continued, adding “I need to hear your voice, and “I will. pray for you.’

According to the June 2021 warrant, police verified that the Facebook account used to send the messages belonged to Ian Cleary.

After leaving Gettysburg, Cleary earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at Santa Clara University, near his family home in California.

He also worked for Tesla, then moved to France for several years, according to his website, which describes his self-published medieval fiction.

Keeler, a native of Moorestown, New Jersey, went on to graduate from Gettysburg and help the women’s lacrosse team win a national title.

In 2023, two years after the warrant was filed, Keeler and his lawyers wondered how he could avoid capture in the age of digital tracking.

The U.S. Marshals Service believed he was likely overseas and on the move, even though he was the subject of an Interpol alert called a red notice.

In the United States, very few campus rapes are prosecuted, both because victims fear going to the police and prosecutors are reluctant to pursue charges that can be difficult to win. according to the AP investigation.

Keeler, when the arrest warrant was issued, said she was grateful, but knew it only happened “because I went public with my story, which no survivor should have to do to obtain justice.