Constance Marten and her partner Mark Gordon have been convicted of manslaughter over the death of their newborn daughter. The infant died in freezing conditions in December 2022, after the pair went on the run to evade social services.
Marten, 38, claimed that she was attempting to live off-grid in a tent on the South Downs with her convicted rapist partner Mark Gordon, 51, in a bid to ‘protect’ their newborn daughter, Victoria. The pair have four other children, all of which were previously taken into care.
Prosecutor Tom Little KC told the court during their Old Bailey trial that the baby had been placed in “utterly reckless, utterly dangerous” conditions by Marten and Gordon, meaning her death was “inevitable”. The trial revealed that the couple had previously been warned of the dangers of attempting to live ‘off-grid’ with a child by social services.
The prosecution revealed that Victoria likely died from hypothermia in the cold wintry conditions of the tent, or may have been smothered while co-sleeping. Marten cast blame on social services, her wealthy aristocratic family, and the media after Victoria died – however, the full circumstances surrounding her four other children and the reasons for them being taken into care are only now being reported at the conclusion of the trial.
The trial also brought to light previous police and social services incidents, including the fact that Marten had suffered a “shattered spleen” in a suspected domestic abuse incident when she was 14 weeks pregnant in 2019. A family court judge had ruled against the couple after a violent incident in November 2019. These details were revealed following a legal argument from prosecutors that Marten – and later Gordon – were attempting to give a false impression of their case to the jury.
Prosecutor Joel Smith KC said Marten was 14 weeks pregnant when she suffered a “shattered spleen” at her home in London. When an ambulance crew arrived at the flat, Gordon initially refused to let them in to treat her.
After spending eight days in hospital Marten attempted, with Gordon’s support, to discharge herself. Marten reportedly told authorities that she was injured while adjusting a TV aerial outside, but officers attending noted that the television set was ‘covered in a blanket’ which suggested it was not in regular use.
Mr Smith said: “It is proper to make a finding of domestic abuse,” adding that even though police did not have concerns for the wellbeing of their children at the time, social services were worried. He said: “They tried to visit and they would not let them in. There were concerns for Ms Marten quite rightly.”
Marten had briefly alluded to the incident in her police interviews over Victoria’s death, saying she fell from a window by accident. She had repeatedly rejected the conclusions of the Family Court judge, even though they were presented to jurors as undisputed facts agreed by both sides in the first trial.
The judge’s ruling in February 2021 found that in November 2019, Marten’s attempt to discharge herself from hospital would have “put her life and that of her unborn child at serious risk”. The defendants had “deliberately evaded the local authority in late 2019 when it was carrying out an investigation into the wellbeing of the children”, according to the ruling.
The judge also found that the arrangements made by the defendants for antenatal and post-natal care for three of the children “fell well below what a reasonable parent would be expected to provide”. No action was taken against Gordon over the alleged domestic abuse of Marten in November 2019, which the defendants had denied.
During the legal argument, Gordon’s then-barrister John Femi-Ola KC said: “The fact is, all there is are the injuries that we’ve heard about. Nobody knows what the background is. Nobody actually knows what happened. Both defendants told the police constable their side of the story and there were no further actions taken.”
Mr Smith disagreed, saying: “He refused to let the ambulance in. His girlfriend had a shattered spleen. She had to spent eight days in hospital. She is being given carte blanche to impugn the finding of an independent judge. It’s not sufficient to say that’s the finding of the judge. The jury are now asking, are we going to hear evidence whether the judge was correct.”
Mr Femi-Ola said that bringing up the November 2019 incident would lead to “satellite litigation”, forcing the original officers to give evidence in court. The jury was, however, told about Gordon’s convictions which dated back to his childhood in the United States after he painted a misleading picture to the jury in his second trial.
Gordon was jailed in the late 1989 in Florida, in the US, for violent offences including the rape of a woman when he was 14 years old. After serving 22 years behind bars, he was deported from the US to the UK in 2010.
Ahead of the Old Bailey trial last year, defence barrister, Neena Crinnion, unsuccessfully argued the case should be thrown out because of publicity about the US conviction. She said: “The whole nation was on notice and being invited to engage. It is that that sets this case apart. The white aristocrat and the black rapist helped sear this case in the public consciousness, captivating the public for that six-week period and beyond.”
She added: “It is even more exceptional that the offences were committed by a child. It is difficult to think of a British child who would have been sentenced in those terms for those offences, and that is why the detail of those offences is exceptional and make a potential prejudice to Mr Gordon so exceptional.”
There were more convictions against Gordon in the UK that the jury was not told about. They included a 2017 assault on two female police officers at a maternity unit in Wales where Marten gave birth to their first child, for which Gordon was sentenced to six months in prison and was released in January 2018.
Marten presented a different picture of her relationship with Gordon, saying simply that he was “amazing” and her “soulmate”. Following a retrial at the Old Bailey, Marten and Gordon were found guilty of their daughter Victoria’s manslaughter.
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