A retired vicar accused of sadism repeatedly beat a woman with a bamboo stick for nearly a decade, a crown court jury has found.
Hilary Alflatt, 87, had been accused of treating his victim like a slave and forcing her to take a vow of obedience when he worked at a church in Sheffield during the 1980s. He was said to have punished her for looking him in the eye, making her prostrate herself before him, kiss his feet and call him “master”’
Having been diagnosed with dementia, Alflatt was judged unfit to stand trial. A jury at Hull crown court was tasked with deciding whether he committed the offences rather than delivering verdicts.
On Monday the jury found that he committed actual bodily harm over almost 10 years, repeatedly beating the woman with a bamboo stick. Jurors were unable to decide on a charge that Alflatt branded the shape of a cross on to the woman using a hot needle.
He was cleared of three other counts of causing actual bodily harm that related to more time-specific allegations, and two counts of false imprisonment, which included claims that he held her prisoner in a room at the vicarage for five days.
Judge Sophie McKone told the jury: “There’s no mystery – you know Mr Alflatt is not here. He has dementia; he is in a nursing home.
“Although you found he did the acts in count seven, the court does not punish him for that because he is not fit to take part in the trial. He is not going to go to prison.”
She said her options for dealing with the case were to hand down an absolute discharge, to make a guardianship order, or to impose a hospital order. A hearing to decide on this will take place on 3 May.
In police interviews, the woman, who cannot be named, said Alflatt had made her take vows of obedience, poverty and chastity. Disobedience, she was told, would be “to disobey God”. The jury also heard from police interviews given by Alflatt, of Northallerton, in which he agreed that some of the alleged incidents had happened. But he said they were consensual.
Alflatt, previously known by the first name Malcolm, said the woman had become “hooked” on him after the met in the early 1980s. He was at a “low point” in his marriage and she was “sympathetic”, he said in interviews read to the jury.
She began “asking me to do things” including beating her, he said in the interviews. “I felt I had to keep her happy because I was in a relationship which, if it came out, would have destroyed my parish. She had a real hold over me.” He claimed to police that he thought if he “caused her more pain, she would leave me alone”.
In her closing speech Louise Reevell, prosecuting, said: “This case is not about an affair and consent, it’s about power, control, depravity and sadism on his part.”
In reply, Kathryn Pitters, defending, said: “They formed a romantic relationship, and although some of the proceedings that took place may make you raise an eyebrow, the reality, as he puts it, was: you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors between two consenting adults.”
