A father has relived the moment he was stabbed in the back in a shocking street attack – which was captured on CCTV.

Kurtis White was airlifted to King College Hospital in London after the harrowing incident in Ramsgate town centre.

CCTV footage from the night has been shared alongside Mr White’s story in a poignant new documentary, which highlights the lasting impact an attack can have on a person's mental health.

In the programme, the 32-year-old from Margate opens up about how the attack is still impacting his life 18 months on.

“It has taken me until the last couple of months to fully recover,” he explained.

“Doing the documentary has made it much easier for me to open up and speak about what happened.

“It has done me the world of good talking about my trauma, it has been a major part of my recovery.

“I used to want to stay at home, and not go out and I didn't think it had anything to do with the stabbing, but after being involved with the documentary, I realised it wasn't normal behaviour.

“I didn't think it would be such a long road to recovery emotionally and physically.”

Mr White had been waiting for a taxi after a night out when he thought he had been punched in the back.

“I didn’t realise I'd been stabbed at first,” he explained.

“I wasn't in any pain so I thought I would be alright and that I'd be stitched up and sent home.”

But things took a turn for the worse and Mr White was treated for a punctured lung, liver and diaphragm damage, and internal bleeding, and had his gallbladder removed during 28 days in hospital.

It took Mr White a long time to build up the courage to watch the CCTV footage from the night of his attack and at first it brought back negative memories.

But now the father-of-one says he is glad it has been shared as it shows the true impact of knife crime.

“It’s alright speaking about knife crime, but sometimes you need to see it to see the full impact,” he explained.

“When you watch it makes you realise how bad it was and it’s powerful that it is included in the film.

“At the start I struggled coming to terms with it, and the shock of seeing it brought back negative memories. I became withdrawn.

“But I did start to feel back to normal and eventually. It felt like a weight off my shoulders.”

One of the messages Mr White hopes to get across is that knife crime is not just an issue in London.

He said: “As soon as you hear the word knife crime, I used to think it was just London but the documentary shows it happens everywhere. It’s a pandemic in itself.

“I hope it shows the long-term effects it has on people who have survived this.

“It's not just the physical scars, it’s the emotional ones too.”

Daniel Haine, of Birchington was handed a nine-year extended sentence at Canterbury Crown Court last October after pleading guilty to Mr White’s attack.

Haine ran away from the scene but was arrested two days later after being identified by the CCTV, despite trying to evade the police.

Searches of the local area also found the coat he had worn and a balaclava. A knife was found in a flower bush.

The documentary called Scars: Surviving a Stabbing was created by film-maker Aodh Breathnach who opened up about his own experience after being stabbed eight years ago.

Mr Breathnach says he hopes the programme, which aired on BBC Three earlier this month, showcases how knife crime continues to impact people’s lives even years down the line.

He told KentOnline: “As a young man at the time I didn’t really speak about what happened to me. Therapy was never something that I considered and that’s the experience of quite a lot of other young people.

“After eight years of bottling it up, I noticed my feelings of hurt, anger and fear weren’t going away.

“I thought it would be a really rewarding and therapeutic process to share my experience and talk to others.

“I want young men to see this and realise that knife violence is not glamorous in any way.”

Mr Breathnach said he felt showing the CCTV from Mr White’s attack in his documentary was the right thing to do to accurately shine a light on the topic.

“Kurtis is a genuinely kind person so I found it really upsetting at first to hear someone attacked him when his back was turned.

“He found some closure by seeing his perpetrator go through the criminal justice system and I never had that.

“Curtis and I spoke a lot about the CCTV of his attack.

“We felt it wouldn’t be right to represent knife violence and not show how upsetting it can be so for that reason we decided to put the CCTV in the film.”

Ramsgate has been blighted by knife crime over recent years with scenes of violence erupting in and around Harbour Street and the seafront.

Some locals told KentOnline they avoid walking home for fear of being attacked, with one bar worker revealing she keeps her "keys in one hand and a lighter in the other, just in case".

Scars: Surviving a Stabbing is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.