While she pleaded for prosecutors to take up her college rape complaint, Shannon Keeler studied in Spain, won a national championship in lacrosse, earned a bachelor’s degree, and fell in love.
All the while, she gathered evidence from the freshman year attack and passed it on to investigators. Here are the names of people who saw the upperclassman stalk me at the frat party in 2013. Here’s the phone number of the friend who saw him follow me home. Here’s the name of the hospital where my coach took me for a rape kit.
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And then, just last year: Here’s a recent message from his Facebook account that says, “So I raped you.”
After verifying the account, and after Keeler told her story to The Associated Press, a new team of police and prosecutors on Tuesday obtained an arrest warrant, charging Ian Cleary, 28, of Saratoga, California, with sexually assaulting Keeler when they were students at Gettysburg College in 2013. Police say they had not yet located him, and aren’t sure where he is. So it’s still not clear whether Keeler will see the case go to trial.
“While I am moved to tears by this result, which I have waited for (for) over seven years, I am mindful that this moment came because I went public with my story, which no survivor should have to do in order to obtain justice,” Keeler, now 26, said in a statement issued through her lawyer.
Keeler had shared her experience detailing the frequent reluctance among prosecutors to file charges in campus rape cases. Authorities had told Keeler it was difficult to prosecute cases when the victim had been drinking, she said. The rape kit was later lost or destroyed.
The affidavit filed along with the warrant accuses Cleary, then a junior and a goalie on the ice hockey team, of following Keeler home from the party, sneaking into her room and sexually assaulting her. Keeler did not even know his name. As he apologized and fled, Keeler texted friends on campus “OMG please Help me,” the documents said.
The Gettysburg Police Department had reopened the case last year after Keeler showed them a flurry of messages that appeared to come from Cleary’s Facebook account. Police got a search warrant for the account, and matched it to Cleary through the cellphone number, according to the affidavit. Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett, whose office had filed few rape cases involving adult victims since 2013, supported the charges.
Only one in five college sex assault victims report to police. And when they do, experts say, prosecutors often hesitate to take cases where victims had been drinking or knew the accused.