A mother has been found guilty of the manslaughter of her nine-year-old son, who had 50 injuries all over his body and was found submerged in a bath, while her partner has been found guilty of his murder.
Prosecutors said that Alfie Steele was repeatedly assaulted, beaten and put in a cold bath as part of a cruel and “sinister” regime of correction by Carla Scott and Dirk Howell in Droitwich, Worcestershire.
Jurors at Coventry Crown Court took 10 hours and 13 minutes of deliberation to find 35-year-old Scott guilty of Alfie’s manslaughter, returning a majority verdict of 11 to one on Tuesday. She was cleared of his murder.
Howell, 41, was found guilty of Alfie’s murder by unanimous verdict. The judge, Mr Justice Wall, remanded both defendants into custody to be sentenced at 11am on Thursday. He also said the jurors that they would never have to sit on a jury again.
During their trial, both defendants told jurors that Alfie was not “dunked” in a bath at his home in Droitwich, Worcestershire, as a punishment prior to his death on February 18, 2021.
Opening the case last month, prosecutor Michelle Heeley KC said that the pair 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”.
She added that Alfie had 50 injuries all over his body, with only a handful likely to be due to normal childhood bumps and scrapes. Scott, of Vashon Drive, Droitwich, and Howell, of Princip Street, Birmingham, had denied the charges against them.
The family was known to social services and neighbours had made repeated calls to police to raise concerns about how Alfie was being treated. A safeguarding review will now explore what more could have been done to save him.
