Jury in trial of former Sheffield vicar accused of branding woman with cross and treating her like a slave UK News

Previously known as Malcolm, Alflatt is charged with five counts of assault causing actual bodily harm and two counts of forcible confinement.

The defendant, now from Northallerton, North Yorkshire, has been found unfit to plead, so jurors will not return a verdict but must decide whether he committed the alleged offenses.

The Crown said Alflatt abused the vulnerable woman, who cannot be identified, for a long time and treated her like his slave.

It is said that he punished her for looking him in the eye, made her bow down to him, kissed her feet and called him “master”.

In interviews with police, Alflatt had agreed that some of the alleged incidents had occurred, but said they were consensual.

Prosecuting Louise Reevell told Hull Crown Court: ‘This case is not about an affair and consent, it is about power, control, depravity and sadism on her part.

The alleged victim claimed that the accused struck her repeatedly with a cane, ‘kicked’ her in the face, left her ‘black and blue’, nearly drowned her in the bath and had locked up in the cellar of the presbytery.

She also claimed that he marked her under his arm after heating a needle, making two cross-shaped marks on her skin.

Kathryn Pitters, defending, said the priest claimed it was a consensual relationship.

She said: “They formed a romantic relationship and while some of the proceedings that took place might make you raise an eyebrow, the reality, as he says, was, ‘you don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors between two consenting adults’.”

Judge Sophie McKone told the jury: “It’s not my job to decide the facts of the case, it’s not my job to decide which version of events is true, it’s up to you. “