A mother and her partner found guilty of the death of a nine-year-old boy found in the bathtub

The United Kingdom has experienced a new chapter of child cruelty. A mother has been found guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of her nine-year-old son, who in February 2021 was found unconscious in a cold bathroom with 50 injuries all over his body, while his partner has been found guilty of his murder.

Prosecutors said nine-year-old Alfie Steele was repeatedly assaulted, beaten and placed in a cold bath as part of a cruel and “sinister” punishment regime by his mother Carla Scott and her partner Dirk Howell in Droitwich, Worcestershire. .

Jurors at Coventry Crown Court deliberated for just over 10 hours to reach a verdict for Scott, 35, and Howell, 41.. At the moment, both defendants are in pretrial detention and will be sentenced next Thursday.

During the trial, both defendants denied having “immersed” Alfie in a cold bath as punishment before his death on February 18, 2021.. Scott said he had been enjoying a hot bath, but his low body temperature of 23C suggested otherwise.

At the trial, which lasted six weeks, Scott and Howell, a career criminal, were said to have tried to cover up the murder by delaying calling emergency services after Alfie drowned, suffocated or suffered a cardiac arrest.. The exact cause of his death could not be determined, the indications indicated that he had died after being submerged in icy water.

Opening the case last month, prosecutor Michelle Heeley KC said the pair beat Alfie with “belts, or a slider, like a heavy-duty flip-flop, and used other, more sinister forms of punishment” and made him being out at night and pouring cold water over it.

Neighbors used to repeatedly call the police after hearing screams and crying coming from the family home. Some neighbors heard him scream as he was forced into the cold baths, and others reported seeing him standing in the garden at night “like a statue” while Howell berated him.

In a call to emergency services made six months before Alfie's death, a neighbor told police: “It looks like my neighbors are doing something bad to their son in the bathtub.. As if they were really hurting him. It sounds like someone was spinning in the bathtub.. It sounds like he's being hit and held underwater or something.”

The call was played to jurors, along with audio from an emergency call in 2020 in which a concerned resident told the operator “something weird is going on.”

Despite a social services plan to protect Alfie, which prohibited Howell from spending the night with the boy, Scott regularly broke this rule, Crown Prosecutions told jurors.

Howell “believed in discipline,” which was much more physical and psychological than conventional methods such as bedtime or the naughty step, Heeley said.

Alfie was the product of his mother's previous relationship, but the couple broke up in 2017. Scott began dating Howell in July 2019 and within six months they were engaged.