After months of torture, a woman and her partner were found guilty of killing their nine-year-old son in the bathtub.
At his ‘dishevelled’ family home in Droitwich, Worcester, in February 2021, a lifeless Alfie Steele body with 50 different wounds was discovered.
He apparently suffered from a “cruel and sinister” punishment routine that included whipping with belts and flip-flops before passing away.
At Coventry Crown Court, the boy’s mother, Carla Scott, was found guilty of manslaughter and Dirk Howell, 41, was found guilty of the boy’s murder.
The jury found her not guilty of murdering Alfie.
Jurors cleared her of Alfie’s murder. They were told by the judge they would never have to sit on a jury again.
They deliberated for 10 hours over the case after weeks of hearing horrific details of the nine-year-old’s final months.
Jurors heard how his punishments included beatings, being forced to stand outside and being dunked head first in cold baths.
The family was known to social services and neighbours had made repeated calls to police to raise concerns about how Alfie was being treated.
On 18 February, 2021, Scott called 999 to report that her son wasn’t breathing. She told the call handler that Alfie had fallen asleep in the bath at their home in Droitwich, Worcestershire.
When two police officers arrived at 2.30pm, Howell was not at the house.
Scott told the officers that she had found Alfie ‘submerged’, adding he had previously ‘hit his head’.
By that stage Alfie was lifeless, not breathing and was already cold to touch – just six minutes after the 999 call.
Scott lied to police that she had last seen Howell a couple of days earlier. In fact, CCTV showed him running away from the house around the time the 999 call was made.
He was arrested a short time later as he tried to board a train at Droitwich station.
The trial heard both Scott and Howell thought it was acceptable to hit Alfie with ‘belts, or a slider, like a heavy-duty flip flop, and use other more sinister forms of punishment’.
This included ‘dunking’ him ‘in cold baths whilst naked’ or forcing Alfie to ‘stand outside, in the middle of the night and have cold water’ thrown over him.
A recording made by a neighbour in which Alfie can be heard screaming ‘open the door’ repeatedly after being locked out of the house was played to the trial.
Concerns about Alfie had been raised with the authorities on many occasions and police and social workers had been involved.
In the year before Alfie’s death, neighbours had made a number of 999 calls.
On 4 April, 2020, neighbour Daniel Grindrod called to tell police ‘I’m hearing some really worrying noises from next door’, adding: ‘I’ve heard what sounds like a child in distress.’
The following day neighbours Graham and Rosemary Willetts called 999 to report ‘something very strange’ about the house.
They called police again the next month and Mrs Willetts described seeing a boy in the garden being disciplined.
‘He’s standing like a statue,’ she said. Asked by the caller if they’d reported the family before, she said: ‘Yes, yes, this lad we believe is called Alfie.’
In August 2020, just over six months before Alfie died, next-door neighbour Gemma Allcott made a harrowing 999 call telling police: ‘It sounds like my neighbours are doing something bad to their kid in the bath, like they’re really hurting them.’
Social workers had put in place a protection plan that meant Howell was not allowed to stay overnight at the house, a rule the couple repeatedly flouted.
Social worker Hayley Waldron told the trial that in March 2020 there had been legal discussions over whether to remove Alfie from Scott’s care, but because Scott had been seen to be working with social workers at that stage it was deemed the situation did not cross that threshold.