Alfie Steele: Mother and partner convicted of killing nine-year-old boy after months of abuse
A mother and her partner have been convicted of killing the woman’s nine-year-old son who had 50 injuries all over his body at the time of his death.
Alfie Steele died after being repeatedly beaten and held in a cold bath as part of a “sinister” regime of punishment inflicted on him.
Dirk Howell, 41, was found guilty of murder and Carla Scott, 35, was convicted of manslaughter but found not guilty of murder at Coventry Crown Court.
The judge, Mr Justice Wall, remanded both defendants into custody to be sentenced at 11am on Thursday.
Alfie’s many injuries included bruises all over his body and signs he had been deprived of oxygen.
The trial heard that after his mother met Howell, Alfie “suffered assaults and cruelty, by being beaten, assaulted, punished with cold water and made to endure a life that no child should lead”.
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.
During their trial, both defendants told jurors that Alfie was not “dunked” in a bath at his home as a punishment prior to his death.
Carla Scott has been convicted of the manslaughter of her son Alfie Steele and Dirk Howell has been convicted of his murder
The six-week trial was told Scott and career criminal Howell tried to cover up the killing by delaying calling 999 after Alfie was either drowned, asphyxiated or went into cardiac arrest.
The court heard Alfie, who was found lifeless with a body temperature of 23C, may have been put back in a warm bath as the couple tried to pass off the murder as an accidental drowning.
Scott lied to police that she had last seen Howell a couple of days before Alfie’s death. 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.
Carla Scott speaks to paramedics
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.”
The caller told police it sounded like Alfie was “being hit and held under the water or something” at his home in Vashon Drive.
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.
An independent child safeguarding practice review is under way to establish whether more could have been done to protect Alfie.
UK
Changes needed to fix ‘broken system’, as illegal migration ‘creating division across our country’, says home secretary
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has denied that her plans to clamp down on illegal immigration are “racist” – instead describing them as a “moral mission”.
Shabana Mahmood said illegal immigration was causing “huge divides” in the UK, and added: “I do believe we need to act if we are to retain public consent for having an asylum system at all.”
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Speaking on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Ms Mahmood said the government would set out changes to the asylum system in a bid to reduce the “pull factor” for those arriving in the UK via small boat.
The home secretary has been looking to Denmark for inspiration, where there are tighter rules on family reunions and restrictions on how long refugees can stay.
Measures that are expected to be announced on Monday include changing the rules so that people who are granted asylum in the UK will only be allowed to stay temporarily, and will have their refugee status subject to regular review.
The statutory legal duty to provide asylum seeker support, including housing and weekly allowances, is expected to be revoked.
Ms Mahmood said such changes were needed to fix the “broken” asylum system.
‘Moral mission’
But asked how she would respond to those who believe the government has been “panicked into a racist immigration policy”, Ms Mahmood said: “I reject that entirely.”
“I am the child of immigrants,” she said. “My parents came to this country legally, in the late 60s and early 70s. This is a moral mission for me.”
Ms Mahmood said she had observed how illegal migration had been “creating division across our country”.
“I can see that it is polarising communities across the country. I can see that it is dividing people and making them estranged from one another. I don’t want to stand back and watch that happen in my country.”
Under current UK rules, people who are granted refugee status have it for five years and can then apply for indefinite leave to remain and get on a route to citizenship.
The government has already announced it will change the rules around indefinite leave to remain with a new set of requirements, including how much someone contributes to the UK and higher English language requirements.
The move to impose tighter restrictions have been interpreted as a way for Labour to counter the threat posed by Nigel Farage and Reform UK, which has laid out plans to deport people who already have ILR – which gives people the right to settle, work and study in the UK and even claim benefits, even if they do not then apply to be British citizens.
Ms Mahmood said that highlighting issues in the system did not amount to making “right-wing talking points or fake news” and that the government had a “genuine problem to fix”.
Although Ms Mahmood is seeking to emulate aspects of the Danish asylum system, she is not copying it in full.
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Inside Europe’s people-smuggling industry
In Denmark, asylum seekers’ access to public housing is restricted in certain areas where there are more than 30% of ethnic minorities, low levels of education and low incomes.
The home secretary said she was not going to “dictate where people live based on percentages”.
Asked if this was one of the measures the UK government may adopt, the home secretary said: “That’s not the sort of country that we are.”
Alongside bringing in measures to mimic Denmark, Ms Mahmood said she would also announce plans to reform the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – aspects of which she said had been used to “frustrate the removal” of those with no right to be in the UK.
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Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said Labour’s plans to reduce immigration were merely a “series of gimmicks” while Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy, claimed Ms Mahmood would be blocked from bringing in her plans by her own MPs.
Meanwhile, the SNP have branded the government’s reforms to asylum policy “outrageous”, and have accused Labour of “dancing to Nigel Farage’s tune on immigration”.
The party’s concerns were echoed by the Greens, whose deputy leader Mothin Ali said the furore over the number of people arriving in the UK on small boats was a “very manufactured problem”.
He told Sky News: “To me, it feels like a very manufactured problem. It’s a problem that’s been created to create outrage.”
Max Wilkinson, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesperson, told Sky News it was “right” that the government was aiming to tackle illegal migration, but said some of the language used had been a “bit uncomfortable”.
Many Labour MPs have been left shellshocked after the chaotic political self-sabotage of the past week.
Bafflement, anger, disappointment, and sheer frustration are all on relatively open display at the circular firing squad which seems to have surrounded the prime minister.
The botched effort to flush out backroom plotters and force Wes Streeting to declare his loyalty ahead of the budget has instead led even previously loyal Starmerites to predict the PM could be forced out of office before the local elections in May.
“We have so many councillors coming up for election across the country,” one says, “and at the moment it looks like they’re going to be wiped out. That’s our base – we just can’t afford to lose them. I like Keir [Starmer] but there’s only a limited window left to turn things around. There’s a real question of urgency.”
Another criticised a “boys club” at No 10 who they claimed have “undermined” the prime minister and “forgotten they’re meant to be serving the British people.”
There’s clearly widespread muttering about what to do next – and even a degree of enviousness at the lack of a regicidal 1922 committee mechanism, as enjoyed by the Tories.
“Leadership speculation is destabilising,” one said. “But there’s really no obvious strategy. Andy Burnham isn’t even an MP. You’d need a stalking horse candidate and we don’t have one. There’s no 1922. It’s very messy.”
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Starmer’s faithfuls are ‘losing faith’
Others are gunning for the chancellor after months of careful pitch-rolling for manifesto-breaching tax rises in the budget were ripped up overnight.
“Her career is toast,” one told me. “Rachel has just lost all credibility. She screwed up on the manifesto. She screwed up on the last two fiscal events, costing the party huge amounts of support and leaving the economy stagnating.
“Having now walked everyone up the mountain of tax rises and made us vote to support them on the opposition day debate two days ago, she’s now worried her job is at risk and has bottled it.
“Talk to any major business or investor and they are holding off investing in the UK until it is clear what the UK’s tax policy is going to be, putting us in a situation where the chancellor is going to have to go through this all over again in six months – which just means no real economic growth for another six months.”
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Why is the economy flatlining?
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Starmer and Reeves ditch plans to raise income tax
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After less than 18 months in office, the government is stuck in a political morass largely of its own making.
Treasury sources have belatedly argued that the chancellor’s pre-budget change of heart on income tax is down to better-than-expected economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.
That should be a cause of celebration. The question is whether she and the PM are now too damaged to make that case to the country – and rescue their benighted prospects.
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