The mother of a little girl from York who died after being attacked by a teenager on the outskirts of the city six years ago has told YorkMix the family is still struggling to come to terms with what happened.
Alison Rough says they are determined that Katie will be remembered for being the inspiration to do good and help people more than what happened near a housing estate in Woodthorpe.
A 16-year-old admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility following the attack in 2017. Katie was found with terrible injuries after she was reported missing.
She was seven years old.
Since the death of their daughter, the family have been determined to raise money to help others because Katie was always thinking of people less fortunate than herself.
Her mum told YorkMix Radio that she was the sort of girl who would give her sweets to anyone, especially the homeless.
Their latest fundraiser was on Saturday when the family undertook a coastal walk in Northumberland.
Alison Rough said: “We did this 26 mile coastal walk in Northumberland for the charity CALM, which stands for the Campaign Against Living Miserably, set up for people living with mental health difficulties. It’s for everyone but aims a lot towards men, because men quite often are left out.
“So I think men often find it harder to step forward and to speak up when they’re struggling.
“And suicide in young males is that is the highest cause of death in males in the age range of 18 to 40.”
If you wish to help the family with their fundraising click on this link to go to the home page
She said that for her, Katie’s Dad and the rest of the family doing this sort of thing is of great comfort but they still struggle to come to terms with what took place.
“We want to keep her memory and legacy alive, it’s really important to us, for other people, it might seem like a long time ago, but for us, it’s still very raw.
“It’s still like it’s just happened, it’s still really difficult to believe it’s still, oh, my God, did this really happen?
“It’s just hard to believe that she’s really gone.
“When people think about her, they’re gonna think of what happened. If they could think of her and think of the things that we have done in her name that would be much better.
“To be honest, we don’t we don’t know what else to do. This is not a situation you expect to find yourself in.”
Alison continued : “She loved acts of kindness. She was the sort of girl who would be walking through York and see somebody sitting down in the street and offer them one of her sweets.
“She saw a homeless person, she would offer them a sweet, she did that all the time. And that was never something I suggested to her. That was just something she just did, little things like that.
“You knew that she would have built on that if she had had the chance and would have done more as she grew up, so we feel that we need to do that for her, in her name.”
Alison said the memory of what happened is always there.
The charity work helps take their minds off the horror of it all but it will never really get any better. It will just be there all the time, she said.
They have to live with that and the fact that it just doesn’t feel like six years, it’s like it happened six months ago all the time.
She told YorkMix if she and the family continue to struggle to get their heads round it but having a close family network is a blessing and helps them all cope.