Campus sexual assault suspect accused of sending ‘So I violated you’ message to victim extradited to US

Prosecutors at the French Court of Appeal said that an American man accused of sexually assaulting a student in Pennsylvania in 2013 and after sending a Facebook message that said: “So I violated you,” she was extradited to the United States on Thursday.

The prosecutor’s office of the Court of Appeal in Metz, in northeastern France, said Ian Cleary was handed over to American authorities at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport.

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

Cleary had been the subject of an international investigation since authorities in Pennsylvania issued a 2021 felony warrant in the case weeks after an Associated Press story detailed the reluctance of local prosecutors to prosecute sex crimes in the campus.

The arrest warrant accuses Cleary of stalking an 18-year-old Gettysburg College student at a party in 2013, sneaking into her dorm room and sexually assaulting her while she texted friends for help. He was a 20-year-old Gettysburg student at the time, but has not returned to campus.

the accuser, Shannon KeelerHe had a rape test done the same day. She gathered testimonies and evidence and spent years urging officials to press charges. She returned to authorities in 2021 after discovering Facebook messages that appeared to come from Cleary’s account.

“So I violated you,” the sender wrote in a chain of messages.

“I will never do that to anyone again.”

“I need to hear your voice.”

“I will pray for you.”

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

The AP does not generally identify sexual assault victims without their permission, which Keeler granted.

In all of the United States, very few campus rapes are prosecuted, both because victims fear going to the police and prosecutors hesitate to bring cases that may be difficult to win, an AP investigation has found.