Helping the Good Do Better by Thomas F. Sheridan

Author:Thomas F. Sheridan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2019-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

Oddly enough, we soon began attracting a wide variety of celebrities to our cause as well. Through my previous experiences with Bono, I knew the power celebrities could bring to a cause, so I welcomed them into our odd little group. Singer Ricky Martin was one of the first people interested in our coalition. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had established a foundation that worked to denounce and expose human trafficking, with a special emphasis on children and youth in Latin America. This was a cause close to his heart: in 2002 on a trip to India he came face-to-face with children who were being sold into prostitution. He had already testified in front of Congress once about the existence of modern slavery, and I was happy to have him add some star power to our cause. Ricky was our star witness at the hearings for the act, and he also brought an invaluable amount of press to our overall campaign.

The night before the hearing I went to the Park Hyatt hotel to brief Ricky on the substance of the bill and to practice the testimony. He was warm and engaged and seriously committed to this issue, but like I always did with Bono, I wanted to be sure he was prepared for some of the downsides of standing up on issues like this. Michael Jackson was in the news at that particular moment for his exploits with children that bordered on molestation, or at the very least were highly inappropriate. I warned Ricky that the underbelly of this issue, especially in regard to sex trafficking of young girls, could attract a creep factor to the tone of questions or comments he may receive. He looked genuinely horrified, like he didn’t fully understand what I meant. We discussed it for a few minutes and then I finally said, “You have to be totally comfortable in your own skin on these matters. You can’t appear to be ambivalent on the issues and the gravity of them. If someone were to ask, ‘Why does a famous singer care so much about these girls?’ you’ll need a simple, straightforward response.” There were rumors that Ricky was gay, but he had not yet come out publicly, and his staff and agent weren’t prepared to raise those questions or inadvertently trip him into an area he wasn’t ready to talk about. I was aware of this and wanted to be sure we had minimally prepared him if motives or his personal life were brought up. We crafted our response based on his experience in India and the horror he felt and saw in those children’s eyes. The prepared answer was pretty simple: I’ve been around long enough and lived in the real world. I know victims when I see them. I’ve seen bullying, abuse, and victimization. I can recognize terror in an innocent person’s eyes. When you see it, you know it, and it is impossible for a moral person to turn away.

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