Constance Marten … the lady who became true

It has been 866 days since the body of Constance Marten’s young daughter and Mark Gordon, Victoria, was discovered in a bag from Lidl in a field near Brighton, according to the BBC

Pathologists are still not sure of exactly how she died – but today the jurors have decided that what eventually led to her death was the decision of her parents to take her with them, sleeping on a scene in the frozen winter nights.

Both were convicted today of homicide by gross negligence, after the jurors issued a unanimous verdict.

It was already known that Marten and Gordon had been convicted of deceiving justice and hiding a baby’s birth during a previous trial – but now they were also found guilty of minor abuse

This information was kept secret by the jury to ensure that the couple could have a fair trial for the charge of homicide.

The beginning of the story

From the dock of Old Bailey, Constance repeatedly insisted that she and Mark were good parents.

“There is literally nothing I would do for my children,” he said, adding that “Mark and Mark love our children more than anything else in the world.”

The fact that their first four children were all transferred to an institution and the fifth died in a frozen scene was a mistake of all except for theirs, he insisted.

Marten complained that her rich family did not like Gordon and claimed to have used their wealth and influence to intervene social services and “steal” her children, the Daily Mail notes.

But the official recording of what really happened gives a very different picture of Marten and Gordon’s parenting abilities.

The jurors did not have access to the files because the homicide case focused on their fifth child, Victoria.

But more than 100 pages show what has really happened.

The behavior of Marten and Gordon was also repeatedly challenged, and concerns were expressed that if the children were under the care of the couple they could be exposed to domestic violence and would even be in danger of being injured.

After listening last year, Judge Madeleine Reardon ruled that there was a strong public interest to understand the family court rulings.

He added that, regardless of the outcome of the criminal proceedings, the proceedings were critical to the couple’s decision to live “off the network” to avoid social services.

He also made it clear that the information on the procedure that occurred during the trial was “some and incomplete”. Indeed, Judge Reardon said that the “various reports” Marten gave what happened were inaccurate “in many ways”.

Among them was the claim that he had a slight “fall” from a window when she was three months pregnant and came out without even bruising.

The court found that Gordon caused these injuries.

Equally informative is the image that results from the audiences of the couple’s relationship.

“They see third parties as a challenge for their relationship and consider all support bids as hostile,” the judge observed in one of the decisions of the family court published.

“The intense impression that parents give is that of two people who are wildly united in an uninterrupted struggle against a non -existent opponent.”

This relationship had begun with a random meeting at a store in London. By 2016, Marten and Gordon were a couple – taking part in a non -legally binding “wedding” ceremony in Peru, then interrupting contacts with Marten’s family.

Immediately afterwards, Marten became pregnant with their first child.

Gordon’s criminal past and the false accent

When he became pregnant, he did not know Gordon’s criminal past – in particular, that he had served 20 years in a US prison after being convicted of rape at 14 years. In June 2017, after returning to the United Kingdom from their trips to South America, Marten visited a maternity hospital in London. He had not requested any prenatal care before this point and told the doctors that he was living in a caravan.

Without any further contact from the couple, London’s social services issued a national alarm three months later. NHS issues these cards when a pregnant woman is considered to need protection or support.

When Marten reappeared in November, he was in Wales. She used a false Irish accent and claimed to be a traveler named Isabella O’Brien, who “escaped” by her family, who condemned her because her baby was born out of wedding.

He lied that Gordon, who was present, was just a friend. Marten managed to become believed throughout the birth, but her fraud was revealed when a social worker recalled the alarm and called by the police, confirming Marten’s identity.

The new mother insisted that she could take care of her baby and that she would look for a municipal home and benefits.

But further concerns were caused when social workers found that the couple was living in a moldy scene in a wilderness next to a highway near a Tesco.

That first birth also saw Gordon imprisoned for an attack on a female police officer.

Police sources told the Daily Mail that police officers who visited the hospital spoke with Gordon, who gave them a fake name.

But the date of birth he gave – April 31 – was his destruction. April has only 30 days. When this was pointed out, a clash followed and attacked two female police officers in a “extremely unpleasant incident”, as described.

Gordon had to be immobilized by using a spray before handcuffed.

In 2018, Judge Marjory Taylor decided that a six -month supervision order should be imposed so that social services can attend them when returning to London from Wales.

4 of the 5 children in foster families

But the Family Court had to intervene again in February 2021, when a local authority argued that parents had not taken care of the medical needs of their children, that there was domestic violence and that they “avoided social services’ efforts to investigate and protect children”.

Until then, Marten and Gordon had had three children, who had already been given to foster families- shortly thereafter, the fourth was given. Hearing was often delayed by the couple. In one case, Gordon claimed that he had to get a tooth, forcing the procedure to be postponed.

“Over time it became clear … that parents deliberately avoided being in a position where they had to question the local authority’s details and that they were also desperately struggling to avoid giving the same evidence,” the judge wrote.

Baby Five Five – Victoria – was born in a rented cottage on Christmas Eve of 2022.

The first time the authorities learned about it was when they found a placenta on the back of the couple’s abandoned car, along with four dolls, carefully packed in a tupperware box – painful souvenirs of the four previous children who had been carried out.

Within a few days, the matter was again before the court, which imposed a temporary care order for their baby, which allowed him to be assigned to a foster family as soon as he was found.

In a tragic way for Little Victoria, this was never going to happen.