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A man who sent a Facebook message to a woman he sexually assaulted in college in 2013 saying “So I raped you,” was sentenced Monday to two to four years in prison.
The sentencing comes more than a year after Ian Cleary was extradited from France to Pennsylvania in the Gettysburg College attack, and nearly 12 years after the victim first went to police.
The judge took into account Cleary’s guilty plea, his remorse and his long history of mental illness when sentencing under state guidelines.
Cleary, 32, said he had sent the messages as part of a 12-step program in hopes of atonement.
The victim told the court on Monday that the messages had reopened long-standing wounds from an attack that was not prosecuted for years.
“The system was meant to protect me, instead it protected you,” she said in a powerful 10-minute statement detailing the years she spent pursuing charges, which prosecutors are often reluctant to file in campus sexual assault cases.
“This is not just my story, this is the story of countless women,” she said.
Cleary faced a maximum of 10 years in prison for the attack, and both sides had initially proposed a sentence of four to eight years.
The victim’s lawyer, Andrea Levy, said the sentence was “less than we expected and certainly less than what he deserved”, but said she was relieved the case was over.
The victim said Cleary broke into her dorm on the eve of winter break, when few people were left on campus, then broke into her room and assaulted her.
She was 18 years old at the time, in her first semester on campus.
Senior Judge Kevin Hayes said anyone who had daughters or granddaughters like him at college would find the crime “appalling”.
Nevertheless, he said, “The defendant has pleaded guilty, he has come forward and even though 10 to 11 worrying years have passed in the meantime, we would not be here today but for his hope of some kind of pardon and repentance.”
Cleary left Gettysburg after the attack and eventually completed college in Silicon Valley, California, where he grew up.
He then obtained a master’s degree and worked for Tesla before moving abroad.
In 2019, he sent Facebook messages to the victim, and she resumed her efforts with police and prosecutors after turning their attention to her a few months later.
In 2021, she shared her experience in an Associated Press story on the reluctance of prosecutors to pursue campus sex crimes.
Cleary was convicted a few weeks after the story was published, and after a three-year manhunt, he was extradited from Metz, France, where he was detained in April 2024 on vagrancy-related charges.
In court Monday, Cleary, standing just a few feet away, apologized to the victim and his father. “I’m committed to getting treatment going forward for mental health and things like that,” he said.
Cleary’s family members have declined to comment on the case and have not attended most of his court hearings.
The victim described her repeated attempts to persuade authorities to press charges in the hours after the attack.
“I’ve been thinking about this moment for 12 years,” she said after seeing Cleary in court in July, when he pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault.
He called it a surreal moment.
Authorities in the US and Europe tried to track Cleary after the indictment, but seemed unable to follow his trail, online or otherwise, until his arrest in an unrelated case.
Defense attorney John Ebom said Cleary had been homeless at times and was unaware of the charges. Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett said he suspected but could not prove that Cleary was on the run.
“The system that failed me a decade ago finally delivered accountability, but it came at a cost. Evidence was lost. Time passed,” the victim told the court on Monday, adding that the results of the rape kit she was given that night had been destroyed by the time of her arraignment.
“My life moved on, but its impact never went away, not for me, not for my family, not for anyone who had to watch it again and again,” he said.