A nine-year-old boy who was tortured to death by his mother and stepfather had been recorded as “safe and well” after visits by police and social services in the months before he was killed, a review has found.
Family and neighbours of Alfie Steele from Droitwich, Worcestershire, made more than 60 calls about his welfare in the period leading up to his murder in February 2021, including a call saying it sounded as if he was “being hit and held under the water”.
The boy died after his head was repeatedly held underwater in a bath, after months of cruelty that had left him with more than 50 injuries, a trial at Coventry crown court heard last year.
Alfie’s mother, Carla Scott, was jailed in June 2023 for 27 years for manslaughter, and her partner, Dirk Howell, was ordered to serve life with a minimum term of 32 years for murder.
A child safeguarding practice review, published on Friday by the Worcestershire safeguarding children partnership (WSCP), found that police and social services failed to spot signs of abuse, having placed too much reliance on Alfie himself to share “concerns and evidence that he was being abused and harmed”.
Concerns from Alfie’s grandparents, school and neighbours about injuries to his body were not properly acted upon because they were excused away by the nine-year-old, Scott and Howell, the review found.
He was occasionally marked as “safe and well” when police who visited had not actually seen or spoken to the boy, said the report by Jane Wiffin, an independent reviewer who made eight recommendations to agencies including the WSCP and the probation service.
It found that the professionals who worked with Alfie were hard-working, showed care and commitment to him and the family but were “often hampered by two adults who sought to deliberately lie, mislead and cover up what was happening”.
The report noted that family members and neighbours took “great risks” to help protect Alfie and that more should have been done when they were threatened by Howell, who had a history of “violence and criminality”.
The couple’s six-week trial was told that Alfie was denied food as an act of cruelty and routinely subjected to other “sinister” punishments. Scott and Howell were told at their sentencing hearing that what they had done amounted to the torture of Alfie.
The evidence that secured their conviction included a video filmed by a neighbour in August 2019 recording Alfie’s voice as he pleaded to be allowed back into his home, and a call six months before the boy’s death related to apparent abuse in a bathtub.
The female caller told an operator: “It sounds like my neighbours are doing something bad to their kid in the bath. Like they are really hurting them.”
In further 999 calls in 2020, a concerned resident told the operator “something strange is going on” and another call reported that a family known to police had “got a young lad outside” and “had him in the garden standing like a statue”.
An investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct is ongoing into the contact West Mercia police had with Alfie, Scott and Howell before the killing.
Rachel Jones, an assistant chief constable with West Mercia police, said: “In the immediate aftermath of Alfie’s murder, we carried out an initial review of West Mercia police’s involvement with the family. As a direct result, enhanced training has been put in place for our frontline officers and staff to ensure they fully understand the signs of vulnerability, that they are professionally curious and don’t take information on face value.
“It is with the greatest sadness that we will never be able to undo the dreadful abuse Alfie suffered. Our thoughts remain with all those who knew and loved Alfie.”
