Written by Lucero Benitez, COSS Communications Specialist

In 2015, then 21-year-old Suleman Masood sat among more than a dozen students in a victimology course at Fresno State, learning the subject while also learning how to cope with his personal experience as a victim of domestic labor trafficking.

“I was learning something new every day, and I was getting stronger and it was helping me come back to who I used to be,” Masood says.

Only three years prior, at 18 years old, Masood was trafficked from Orange County to the Bay Area. There, he says he worked 18 hours a day, slept for two, and was beaten and manipulated for four. The abuse went on for two years until a co-worker helped him get back to his family.

His salvation was education.

“I was in the emergency room, I had multiple injuries on myself due to the victimization, but one of the things that was ingrained in me from my family, doctors, physical therapists and psychiatrists was to go to school,” Masood says.

To read the full story, visit Fresno State Magazine.