Benjamin Ashford|12 college students charged with hate crimes after assault in Maryland

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

In addition to assault and false imprisonment, the 12 young men are facing hate crime charges for allegedly targeting the assault victim because he’s gay, Salisbury police said in a news release. According to charging documents, one of the defendants made 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 teenage boy.

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

“Let me just set the record straight — this is not a hate crime,” Rakow said in an email.

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

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University President Carolyn Ringer Lepre said she was creating a taskforce focused on LGBTQ+ inclusiveness.

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

Rakow, in turn, accused the university administration of jumping to conclusions by issuing the suspensions, saying that “apparently, due process doesn’t apply to academia.”

Attorneys for the other students either declined to comment or didn’t respond to requests from AP. Some of the defendants don’t yet have attorneys listed in online court records.

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

Charging documents say the Salisbury Police Department started investigating after two witnesses told campus police that they had seen a video of the Oct. 15 assault.

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

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

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

Some of the defendants have been charged with more counts than others.