"I do not know how many people have stabbed me in my life"

The English Robert Bragg, a former gang member, is now giving lectures in schools so that teenagers do not use violence. The UK is experiencing a wave of crimes with a knife.

"I started wearing a knife at the age of 12 because everyone was doing it at that time," begins his story, Robert Bragg, ex member of a gang who has been interviewed by the BBC to denounce the wave of crimes that has occurred in the UK in recent years. A figure that has increased to mark the climax of 2018.

Bragg, who is now involved in a program to encourage schoolchildren not to get involved in the criminal world, explains why he entered this spiral of violence: "Just to be better seen." By entering these gangs , they asked you to do certain things, so I started to stab people.I thought it was the right thing at that time.We were the bad guys, the gang that everyone In order to get there, we had to commit many violent crimes, to be honest, I do not know how many people stabbed me, I only know that it was a lot, "says the young man who spent six years in prison.

Bragg defends the need to toughen sentences for this type of attack: "If at the time the sentences had been more severe, my actions would have changed much earlier because in this world no one wants to go to prison for knife".

According to official figures, the number of violent and / or deadly stab wounds in England and Wales last year was the highest since records began in 1946.

"In London, that's normal," says Robert Bragg, who now works for a charity working in schools to highlight the dangers of member of a gang. "My life consisted of waking up, having breakfast and stabbing someone – it was crazy because he did not really think about damaging a life, he did not think that he was going to kill someone.I came to try to kill myself when I realized what was the culture of this type of gang.It's all a lie, a deception in which they make you believe that they are there for you, when in fact they make fun of it, "he says.

And Bragg goes on to say, "I wanted to commit suicide and my last hope was God, I told myself before I committed suicide, I will try God and see if God has a plan for my life."

"One day, I entered a church, raised my arms and said," My God, if you are real, help me. "This gang culture prevented me from crying. a man and men do not cry.In the church, I started to cry, it is at that time that I started to feel like a free man. Now I feel that I am born again, that God has helped me and that I want to help others, "concludes Bragg.

The emotional and hopeful sound of Morena, the girl stabbed by a thief