Davide Cerullo was born in 1974 in the northern suburbs of Naples. He is the ninth of fourteen children. In 1980, he moved with his family to Scampia, to one of the “Vele” housing projects. There, he experienced a childhood that was anything but easy or peaceful, quickly coming to know poverty and the major challenges of daily life. Torn away from school, he was drawn into the underworld, which led him into the hellish machinery of the Camorra system. His transformation was not immediate. In fact, after being released from prison, he returned to his old life. However, remorse, emptiness, and dissatisfaction gave him no respite. And so he began to glimpse a chance for redemption by leading a normal life. The path to recovery is not easy, but is punctuated by setbacks and many defeats. Today, however, he has found his inner balance by devoting himself to writing and photography, and to the children of Scampia, for whom he founded a play center, “L’Albero delle Storie.”
