Man who allegedly sent ‘So I raped you’ message has been arrested after a three-year manhunt

Shannon Keeler was speechless when she read a Facebook message from a man she accused of sexually assaulting her in 2013, when she was a college freshman.

“I need to hear your voice,” Ian Cleary, now 31, of Saratoga, California, allegedly wrote in a 2019 message that she discovered in 2020, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by PEOPLE. “I need to know if I did it or not.”

In an even more chilling message, he allegedly wrote: “So I raped you.”

Keeler had tried for years to persuade authorities to arrest the high school student she accused of raping her when they were both students at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, without success.

After receiving Cleary’s Facebook messages, she notified police, but nothing happened. In 2021, she also spoke to the Associated Press for a report on how difficult it is to prosecute sex crimes on college campuses.

Weeks later, Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett filed a felony sexual assault warrant against Cleary.

Now, after a three-year search, a prosecutor in Metz, France, confirmed on Tuesday that Cleary had been detained since April 24 after he was taken into custody as part of a police check, the AP said The New York Times Report.

According to the AP, he is being held in French custody pending extradition proceedings.

An attorney for Cleary did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

Keeler’s attorney, Andrea Levy, declined to comment on the arrest.

In 2021, after the arrest warrant was issued for Cleary, Keeler said in a statement shared with PEOPLE through her attorney Laura Dunn, “Although I am moved to tears by this outcome that I have waited for over seven years . “I recognize that this moment has come because I went public with my story, which is something no survivor should do to seek justice.”

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Keeler’s ordeal began on Dec. 15, 2013, when a friend walked her back to her dorm after a graduation party, where a “child” had been “spooking” her, the affidavit said.

The boy, later identified as Cleary, who was 20 at the time, allegedly followed her and her friend back to the dorm and offered the friend $20 so he could be alone with Keeler, the affidavit said.

The friend told Cleary to leave, the affidavit states. Ten minutes later, Keeler heard a knock on the door and opened it, thinking it was another friend, the affidavit said. It was Cleary who came in and began kissing Keeler before attacking her, the affidavit says.

According to the affidavit, Keeler texted friends before the alleged attack saying “Help please” and “OMG please help me.”

Keeler reported the alleged attack to police, took a rape test and found witnesses who had seen Cleary that night, the affidavit said.

Authorities reopened the case after Keeler told them about the online messages and after the AP story about her case was published.

Police linked Cleary’s Facebook account to a matching cell phone number.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.