Captain Tom Moore’s teenage granddaughter asked “Mum, why do people hate you” as the veteran’s family was targeted by online trolls, his daughter has revealed.
Hannah Ingram-Moore spoke of the “devastating” abuse her family has been subjected to since they were catapulted into the public eye by her late father’s mammoth fundraising efforts for the NHS.
The 51 year old became visibly upset as she told ITV’s This Morning her 13-year-old daughter had asked: “Mum, why do people hate you after all that you’ve done?”
“How can you explain to a 13 year old, when she sees our lives have been immersed in ensuring his legacy lives on, that people can hate it,” she told the programme.
“It’s really difficult to articulate – and [her son] Benji, who’s 18, to give him the words to manage people coming up to him and asking him.
“In the end, my father taught us resilience and positivity and humanity. He believed in the fundamental kindness of humanity and so do we.”
Ms Ingram-Moore previously revealed Sir Tom’s family had shielded him from “horrific trolling” while he was still alive.
Before his death in February 2021, the centenarian and his family travelled to Barbados for what would be their final holiday together.
His flight was paid for by British Airways as a gift for his record-breaking fundraising work during the first national coronavirus lockdown, which saw him raise almost £33m for the NHS by walking laps of his garden in Bedfordshire.
But the army veteran, who served in India, Burma and Sumatra during the Second World War, and his family were targeted with abuse over the trip.
Ms Ingram-Moore told BBC One’s Breakfast programme last year: “I couldn’t tell him.
“I think it would have broken his heart, honestly, if we’d said to him people are hating us.
“Because how do you rationalise to a 100-year-old man that something so incredibly good can attract such horror?
“So we contained it within the four of us and we said we wouldn’t play to ... that vile minority, we wouldn’t play to them, we’re not, because we are talking to the massive majority of people who we connect with.”
In April last year, a memorial in Stoke-on-Trent to honour the city’s coronavirus victims and Captain Sir Tom Moore was vandalised.
The vandals destroyed a plaque in the Fenton Park memorial displaying a quote from the 100-year-old veteran.
