When her teenage son and his girlfriend were killed in the Manchester Arena bomb attack a grieving mother recalls feeling haunted by the word 'victim'. Caroline Curry wanted the world to know that Liam Curry, 19, and Chloe Rutherford, 17, were not just victims, they were “two beautiful, young people with so much love in their hearts.” Caroline, 53, says: “From day one, it filled me with horror when I listened to news broadcasts and heard Liam and Chloe referred to as ‘victims’.
They were not victims, they were people in their own right. They had their own personalities.” She found solace in the bond she formed with Chloe’s parents Mark and Lisa Rutherford - the two people in the world who she felt really understood what she was going through.
Caroline explains: “You always say ‘I can never know how you feel’, but we do know how each other feels, because if one’s feeling it, the other is feeling it. “Both of our children were murdered at the same time. “Now we are one family.
We don’t see each other every day but nearly every day and if we don’t, we certainly have lengthy conversations.” It was these parents’ shared mission to remember their children for the people they were and not merely as victims that led to them launching the Together Forever Trust - so far, raising £800,000 in their memory - and for which they have been nominated for a Pride of Britain award. “We needed a lasting legacy for Liam and Chloe and we needed something posit.
