Arrest warrant filed after ‘So I raped you’ Facebook message in 2013 assault claim
Shannon Keeler told police she received social media messages from alleged attacker last year
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An arrest warrant has been filed after a woman received a ‘So I raped you’ Facebook message years after she reported being attacked in 2013.
Pennsylvania authorities filed the warrant eight years after Shannon Keeler claimed she was attacked, and a year after she received the shocking message on the social media platform from her alleged attacker.
Now police want to take 28-year-old Ian Cleary of Saratoga, California, into custody but have not yet located him, according to the Associated Press.
The affidavit filed with the warrant accuses Mr Cleary of stalking Ms Keeler at a party in December 2013, following her home to her dorm room at Gettysburg College and sexually assaulting her.
It also states Mr Cleary apologised to Ms Keeler and fled the scene, and that she texted friends on campus “OMG please Help me.”
The warrant was filed by Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett, who took over the job in 2016.
Police reopened the case in 2020 after Ms Keeler went to them about a series of messages she had received, apparently from Mr Cleary’s Facebook account.
The affidavit says that investigators have linked Mr Cleary to the account in question through a matching cell phone number.
Ms Keeler told police that when checking her Facebook account for the first time in a long time, she logged on and found messages sent to her months earlier.
“So I raped you,” the sender allegedly wrote in one message.
And others read “If you have a moment give me a call”, “I need to hear your voice”, and “I’ll pray for you.”
Ms Keeler told the news organisation earlier this year that she had gone to the police hours after the alleged attack and a rape kit was done at a local hospital.
“It has bothered me over the years that I was never able to do anything,” said Ms Keeler, who is now 26.
“If you’re not going to help me, who are you going to help? Because I do have evidence.”
But she graduated three years later with no arrest having been made in the case, and authorities told her it was hard to prosecute when the victim had been drinking.
The rape kit was also reportedly later lost.
The Associated Press contributed to this report