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Davey Falcus has fond memories of his early years. He was adopted and his adoptive family were Christians.

He said: "They really put some good seeds and a lot of love into my life in those first years."

But things changed when a wave of deaths hit the family when he was about five. Over the space of a few months he lost three of his grandparents, an uncle he was close to and his adoptive mother.

Davey said it was a devastating time for everyone and he said he was hit hard by the sudden loss of attention.

Started slide

He said: "I suppose when you have had a lot of attention and a lot of love there and suddenly it's not there – it's no fault of my dad's or anything like that, it was just he was busy working, and when you have had a lot of attention and don't get it, I think kids want attention, kids need love and that.

"But I found I didn't get any after that and so I went looking for it on the streets and at school and things like that.

"I started getting locked up before my 10th birthday and things like that. The police were always at the house and things and basically it was because I had had a lot of attention and then none."

Had enough

Davey said he was jailed for bank robberies among other things, was involved in the drug trade and became part of the main criminal firm in the region.

He said: "I started off just robbing out of shops, stealing cars and that and I got into violence and the professional violence and that sort of thing and I started mixing with a lot of heavy duty people down to the point where I was part of the main crew in the North East."

But he said there came a point when he had had enough of that life after many of his friends had died.

He started looking to eastern religions to try to find some answers but nothing worked.

Missing piece

He said: "And it was only when I got to 16 August 1995 – I was desperate, I was suicidal and I needed some answers - that I called out to Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

"I called out to him and he actually came and appeared to us and if that hadn't happened I would still be there now.

"But the fruit of it is that I called out to Jesus because the Bible says if you seek, you'll find, he's there to be found. Anybody who really looks for Jesus will find him and I sought him and I found him.

"And when he came to us he released me from a 20-year alcohol addiction, a 15-year drug addiction, a lifetime of violence and crime and suddenly for the first time in my life I had peace in my life.

"It was like the missing piece I had been searching for all my life was suddenly filled."

Mixed reaction

After a while he started going to church regularly and began helping out and then became a church warden.

He was ordained in 1999 as a full-time minister. He looked after a drug rehabilitation centre and has travelled around the world as an evangelist.

He said he still gets a mixed reaction from people because he doesn't necessarily look like a minister with his tattooed arms.

He has written about his experiences in a book called Gangland to God.