It should have been impossible, but 17-year-old Charlie Cosser just kept fighting.
After being stabbed multiple times at an outdoor party near where he lived in Warnham, West Sussex, the young man lost every milligram of blood in his body.
It would take nearly three days, two traumatic cardiac arrests and one unprecedented open-heart aortic surgery for doctors at the Royal Sussex Hospital to ultimately decide his injuries were unsurvivable.
At his bedside, on 23 July 2023, his Dad made him a promise: to dedicate his life to raising awareness about knife crime, and the immeasurable damage it causes.
The result was ‘Charlie’s Promise’, a preventative charity spearheaded by Martin Cosser created to inspire positive change and end knife crime in the UK.
The charity collaborates with schools, local organisations and youth clubs to inspire young people and help build stronger, safer communities.
The intention is heroic, but more impressive is the scale of change already initiated by a movement launched less than two years ago.
Over the last 15 months Martin’s workshops have reached more than 80,000 young people across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom – from Bangor, to Inverness, all the way to Belfast.
A TikTok account linked to the charity has amassed nearly 82,000 followers. In West Sussex alone, knife crime has dropped by almost 20% since Charlie’s passing. His legacy is already saving lives.
Despite the charity’s significant outreach efforts, though, the unfortunate fact remains that knife crime has grown over 50% in the UK over the last ten years.
“A lot of children, young people, now do not take knife carrying and knife crime seriously,” Martin explained. “It’s becoming – and I hate to say it, in some pockets and in some areas – a way of life.”
“As a society, we’ve lost touch with our young people: they don’t know what they stand for anymore, they speak a different language to us”, he added.
But does this kind of assessment ring true in Jersey? Recent figures paint a troubling picture.
Statistics released following a request under the Freedom of Information Law confirmed that there had been 640 confirmed instances of secondary school students being excluded for making physical threats against fellow pupils in the past five years, with a further 117 exclusions for physical threats made against a teacher.
More concerningly, 36 exclusions were found to have resulted from the use, or threat of use, of an offensive weapon or prohibited item.
Meanwhile, last year’s Jersey School and Colleges Survey found that 28.3% of secondary teachers in Jersey had experienced a physical attack by a pupil in 2025 – a rise from 16.4% in 2021.
Between 2020 and 2024, 17 knife-related crimes involving young people were recorded. These included 11 offences linked to grave and criminal assault, one case of affray, and one attempted murder.
The latter involved a teenager who stabbed another youth 23 times and left him “for dead” with a knife in his back, before boasting about the brutal attack in a rap song recorded on his phone. The Royal Court gave him 12 years’ youth detention, while an accomplice received nine years at HMP La Moye – sentences police officers said at the time they hoped would “send out a strong message to anyone thinking of carrying a knife”.
But the community was shaken once again on Monday 9 February when a 15-year-old boy was restrained and then arrested after bringing a knife into the school canteen. One student sustained what was described as a “very minor” injury to the hand.
Education Minister Rob Ward described the incident as “extremely rare”, and praised the school for the “swift, calm and highly professional response”.
He said: “Our schools have robust site‑security procedures, including controlled access, visitor checks, CCTV, and safeguarding policies that reflect national best practice.
“No system can remove all risk entirely, but this incident shows that staff acted quickly, confidently, and in line with established procedures.”
It was a reaction that troubled Martin, who said treating incidents of knife-carrying in school as “rare” as “a little bit dangerous”.
“I live in Surrey, and I’ll be honest, there’s an affluent snobbery in Surrey, ‘leafy Surrey’, and I can imagine you’ll have a little bit of that in Jersey, in pockets,” he explained.
“That isn’t going to sort the problem – we need to be far more proactive, I think that’s the strap line: ‘Let’s be proactive’
“We ignorantly thought knife crime was all inner cities, working class and gangs – well, if it can happen to Charlie, it can happen to anyone.”
Deputy Ward said a review had been undertaken following the Haute Vallée stabbing “to ensure procedures were followed and to identity any lessons to be learned”.
And during this week’s States Assembly meeting, he added that his department is looking into “what possible training might be needed for staff”.
Speaking on behalf of teachers’ union NASUWT, Marina Mauger previously told the JEP that schools in Jersey would need to reassess their “lockdown procedures” in light of the incident at Haute Vallée.
Ms Mauger also noted that metal-detecting archways are utilised in the UK to prevent knife-related issues, but questioned whether they were necessary in Jersey.
Speaking from his home in Surrey, Martin concurred with the Union representatives’ assessment.
“[Knife arches] are the worst things you can do, a knife arch will create a climate of fear and distrust.
“They address symptoms, not causes, but they don’t tackle the deeper reasons why some people may carry them – if someone’s going to stab someone, they’re going to stab them”, he argued.
Martin told: “Instead of getting loads of knife arches, let’s pay some money and upskill teachers and train them.”
Also advanced as a potential solution by Ms Mauger was the formation of a “pupil referral unit” for children “in our mainstream schools who would not be in mainstream schools in the UK”.
Once again, Martin wholeheartedly agreed.
He explained: “Kids that learn in a different way are having to get isolated at school, suspended, expelled before they end up in the right place they should have been in the first place – so they feel really worthless and useless.
“And, interestingly, a lot of those kids are kids that go on to be in gangs and carry knives, because they’re told they are no good.
“It’s not that they’re no good, they’re misunderstood.”
The charity leader urged: “There needs to be a pathway for these young people, it’s not about getting them in trouble, it’s about getting them support.
“Even if you only have one in the whole of Jersey, it’s about having that one organisation, that one alternative provision school, that one or two people that know how to support that young person and make them feel valued again, and show them that there is another way.
“We need to raise the voice of young people: young people are incredible, but we don’t give them a big enough platform to talk to us, I see it every day.”
In his opinion, some teachers are not always qualified to enter into the emotional life of a struggling, or angry, young person.
“There’s a balance – if you’re not going to be able to set up an alternative provision school tomorrow in Jersey, you do need teachers in school that are qualified – properly qualified – and trained to be able to support that type of child that is struggling for whatever reason.
“When I go to alternative provision schools and I see kids that are loud, they can’t sit still, they swear a bit, [the teachers] love them, they look after them, they guide them, support them, they endorse them, they recognise them, they reward them.
“And those children, for the first time in their lives, feel valued and they are far less high risk than they were when they were in a mainstream setting, where they were just ignored and labelled.”
Throughout the interview, Martin emphasised time and time again that education is single biggest tool in the fight against knife crime.
And there exists no stronger education, he said, than real-life testimony from someone with lived experience of how knife crime can shatter lives.
“The night my son was stabbed, there were 120 people at the party – if one of those young people had heard from an organisation like Charlie’s Promise or a father like me, I guarantee you someone would have reported my son’s murderer that night, or even beforehand”, he stated.
It is crucial, Martin explained, that young people are able to report knife carriers safely and anonymously.
‘Fearless’ – a branch of Crimestoppers for those aged 11-16 – does exactly that, he said.
“[It] enables young people to report knife carriers 100% anonymously and that is a massive thing for a young person.
“A lot of young people do not want to talk to a teacher, they do not want to talk to a parent, they don’t necessarily feel they’re going to get the right answers from the police, so if they contact Fearless, they can feel that they’ve done the right thing without the fear of any come back at all.”
During his workshop, he asks participants to promise they’ll never pick up a knife the wrong reason, and to promise they’ll report anybody who does.
“I would be amazed – and I mean amazed – if anybody that heard my talk would ever pick up a knife again.”
He added that it would be “incredible” to bring the Charlie’s Promise workshop over to schools in Jersey.
“I will come over for two or three days and I will take in as many schools as I can – if there’s a big hall over there, you know, that fits 1,000 people, I will come in and I will share our story.
“I’m literally in schools every day, but I can move a few things around – so if there was an appetite for it, we don’t charge, we ask for an affordable donation, that’ s all – all I care about is keeping people safe and families from suffering.”
As the interview concluded, Martin described his passion for Charlie’s Promise as a “superpower”, a “superpower driven by the love of my son.”
For more information you can visit charliespromise.org and watch TikTok: Murder Gone Viral – ‘The Killing of Charlie Cosser’ on ITVX.
