BALTIMORE (AP) — A dozen students at a university on Maryland’s Eastern Shore have been arrested after they lured a man to an off-campus apartment, beat him and called him a homophobic slur, police say local.

In addition to assault and false imprisonment, the 12 youths face hate crime charges for allegedly targeting the assault victim because he is gay, Salisbury police said in a news release. According to charging documents, one of the defendants created a fake account on a dating app and promised the man sex with a 16-year-old.

Steve Rakow, an attorney representing one of the defendants, vehemently denied the alleged motive. He said the man never reported the incident because he was trying to have sex with a teenager.

The man’s age is not included in court records. Under Maryland law, the legal age of consent is 16 in most cases.

“Let me be clear — this is not a hate crime,” Rakow said in an email.

Salisbury University officials announced last week that the 12 students had been suspended. Officials said the school is working with law enforcement as the investigation continues and “condemns all acts of violence.”

University President Carolyn Ringer Lepre said she is creating a task force focused on LGBTQ+ inclusion.

“Our community is reeling from an act of visceral hatred,” Lepre said in a statement posted on social media. “We are witnessing a campus full of anguish that something so unspeakable could happen from within the community we all love.”

Rakow, for his part, accused the university administration of jumping to conclusions by issuing the suspensions, saying that “due process apparently does not apply in academia.”

Attorneys for the other students either declined to comment or did not respond to AP requests. Some of the defendants do not yet have attorneys listed in online court filings.

Salisbury University is located on the Eastern Shore, about 100 miles southeast of Baltimore.

Charging documents say the Salisbury Police Department began investigating after two witnesses told campus police they saw video of the Oct. 15 attack.

Later, the police obtained the footage from a phone belonging to one of the defendants. It also showed the victim’s car leaving the scene. Police used the license plate number to identify and contact the man, who said he “never notified law enforcement about the attack out of fear for his safety due to reprisals and was threatened by the attackers,” it said in the documents.

The man went to an apartment “for the purpose of having sexual relations” with someone he believed to be 16, according to the documents. Shortly after he entered the apartment, a group of “college-aged males emerged from the back bedrooms” and forced him into a chair in the middle of the living room, police wrote. They slapped, punched, kicked and spat on him while calling him derogatory names and preventing him from leaving, according to police.

Police said the victim suffered a broken rib and extensive bruising.

Some of the defendants were charged with more counts than others.