Shannon Keeler: Man who wrote ‘so I raped you’ sentenced to two to four years in jail

A man who sent a Facebook message saying “So I raped you” to a woman six years after he sexually assaulted her in college was sentenced Monday to two to four years in prison.

The man, Ian Cleary, 32, was also required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, according to the district attorney’s office in Adams County, Pennsylvania.

Cleary pleaded guilty in July to sexual assault after the woman, Shannon Keeler, 30, spent years pressing authorities to bring charges against him for having raped her when they were both students at Gettysburg College in 2013.

Prosecutors had requested that Cleary be sentenced to four to eight years. Cleary’s lawyer, John Abom, had asked that Cleary be sentenced to 18 months, the time he had served in custody. Cleary will get credit for the time he has served, Abom said, calling the sentence “very thoughtful and compassionate.”

Ms Keeler had a different view.

“It definitely was shorter than we expected and less than I think he deserved,” she said in an interview on Good Morning America that was broadcast Tuesday. “But you know what? He’s going to jail and he’s going to have the label of a sexual predator for the rest of his life, and that’s accountability, and that’s justice, and for that, I’m happy, and I’m grateful, and I’m relieved, and I’m lucky.”

Ms Keeler addressed Cleary at his sentencing in the Adams County Court of Common Pleas in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on Monday, describing how trauma from the assault had changed how she saw herself and how her confidence and relationship with her body had shifted in “quiet but painful ways.”

“I was shaking and tearing up a bit, but it felt really good to be able to look him in the eyes and tell him what he did to me,” she said on Good Morning America.

Cleary also spoke in court, addressing Ms Keeler, thanking his family for their support and pledging to seek mental health treatment, Mr Abom said. “He apologised,” Mr Abom said. “He said, ‘I’m terribly sorry for the harm that I’ve caused.’”

In a statement she read in court, Ms Keeler described how the Facebook messages had upended her tortuous quest for justice.

In it, she said that Cleary followed her to her dorm room after a party and sexually assaulted her Dec. 15, 2013. She reported the assault that day to the Gettysburg Police Department and had evidence collected for a rape kit, she said.

“I spent the next two years pushing, begging, pleading for police and prosecutors to take my case seriously,” she said in the statement. But she was told by law enforcement, she said, that there was not enough evidence, that alcohol was involved and that California, where Cleary lived, was too far away for investigators.

So she moved on with her life. She got a job, got married and moved to North Carolina. And then, she said, in December 2019, six years after the assault, Cleary sent her a series of messages on Facebook, while she was on a weekend trip.

“So I raped you,” Cleary wrote, according to court records. “I’ll never do it to anyone ever again.”

Ms Keeler said her heart was racing and her hands shaking as she read the messages.

“I thought, no, no, no — how dare he reenter my life now, when I’ve finally moved on?” she said in the statement. “But then another thought hit: My God. He said it. I’m not crazy. This happened. And now it’s in writing.”

She took the messages to the police, who obtained a search warrant for Cleary’s Facebook account and issued a warrant for his arrest in 2021. Cleary was arrested in April 2024 in France, where he told the French police that he had been living for the past two to three years. He was extradited to the United States in January.

In her written statement to the court Monday, Ms Keeler said the system that had failed her had finally delivered accountability. “To Ian — you stole my safety and my peace, but not my voice. You do not define me,” she said. She added: “I forgive you. And I hope you find your peace.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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