Constance Marten case — I feel the police have some responsibility too

You're suggesting they shouldn't be given a custodial sentence for causing the death of a baby?

I very much they do get "custodials." Partly to reflect what they have done. Partly so that they can't go away and have yet another baby. Another baby whom they also would be in no fit state to look after adequately.

"They've suffered enough"???

Just to your last point it does
sound simple. Keep away from him, keep the children. The reality is the women in these situations don’t keep away. My adopted child was finally removed when birth mum wouldn’t follow the safety plan social services had put in place for her, to keep herself and her child away from people that were dangerous to them. She continually prioritised her relationship with these people over the safety of her child and rightly lost her child. You cannot force someone to stop if they don’t want to.

Her Mother sending her to Nigeria to join a religious order where the pastor used sexual assault as a teaching.

What is the programme called?

Yeah me neither. But it's basically what people are suggesting with the trauma/vulnerable/damaged narrative.

'Whether in another life they might have been good parents separately if they had never met each other - who is to say? '

I doubt a rapist and someone who allegedly threw a women out of a window was ever going to be a good parent.

This makes me think that he stopped her from continuing the visits so that her pregnancy wouldn't be found out, I imagine he was controlling and violent and she was brainwashed and possibly afraid for her life.
I guess we'll never know, but posters saying just leave him, do you really think it's so easy.
He even controlled the narrative by cross examining her in court.
She is clearly mentally unwell, I hope she gets help and support once she's away from him.

Watching the iPlayer prog about them. Upon arrest they aren’t bothered about questions regarding location of the baby. She’s calling out ‘daddy bear’ and questioning how child neglect and concealment of a birth is an offence, and he’s wanting mayonnaise with the chicken they’ve offered him as he’s refusing to say anything other than he’s hungry. Unbelievable.

Well you obviously haven't read much at all anywhere about this case or you wouldn't have posted such drivel.

Hired help is no substitute for caring, loving parenting. It can work in conjunction with caring, loving parenting. But CM was clearly unable to provide that.

Very telling that her family thought the solution to this was to throw money at it.

Apart from anything else, can you imagine someone as disturbed and arrogant as CM being even a semi-decent employer towards a nanny?

Yes, he was a total bastard. . . and she chose to stay with him, and blew kisses towards him in court,and clearly adores him.

It's just not really black and white. I don't know if I believe in "evil" but there are patterns of human behaviour, very rare, where people have such skewed priorities e.g. relating to trauma, drug addiction, psychosis or personality disorder/psychopathy etc that it leads to actions which come across as so short sighted or so self-motivated or actively sadistic that you could call it evil, I suppose.

I believe that they genuinely believed they were acting in the interests of their child. However, they were objectively wrong and it seems they had a clear pattern of making horrendous decisions in the context of all of their childrens' care and probably aren't capable of being good parents. Which is what the judge decided for the other children.

Whether in another life they might have been good parents separately if they had never met each other - who is to say? I think it's fairly unlikely, because I don't think that a relationship can be the sole cause of such fucked up priorities. I think you need some of the other "ingredients" and it does seem like several of them were present in both people before they ever got together. Just a really destructive partnership and probably forms part of why they are so closely bonded.

They represented the highest level of threat and the police knew it was a ticking time bomb. That woman was never going to come forward willingly. She had refused to engage on every level for years. The police did their best to find that baby. Imagine how distressing it was for them?

There is a lot in this.

I don't get the impression that either of them wanted to harm their children, it's just that the children were less important to them than their agenda, whatever that was. To the extent that they didn't focus on meeting their children's needs and keeping them safe because they were too wrapped up in their relationship and 'battle' with the state.

If there is money and resources, it is easier for parents to abdicate responsibility and zone out of looking after their kids without the children's basic needs being neglected in such a stark way.

They were imprisoned after the first trial.

As I understand it, no-one can actually force a defendant to attend court. (How would that work?) The defendant is EXPECTED to attend court, unless there are medical reasons why they can't.

Agree. She may have meant well towards her children, but essentially she prioritised him over the children and their welfare in a way that was at the very least extremely neglectful.

And this would have been a good arrangement for their child?

The problem isn't where they were living, it is with who they are. And what they are is deeply disturbed, hugely entitled, and totally unsuited to having a child or children in their care.

Haven't read the whole thread but obviously the OP has now admitted there is a lot she didn't know.
Without excusing Marten's behaviour, she clearly experienced some trauma from being taken to stay at a church in Nigeria by her mother where people were tortured and sexually abused.

My medical diagnosis for them is: pair of utter cunts-itis.

Indeed, but he served 22 years in a US jail for that crime, which I think was more than he would have served if he'd committed that crime here in the UK.
Also, Constance Marten chose to procreate with him - five times! - so she shouldn't get a free pass either.

"Folie a deux" was exactly the phrase that came to my mind yesterday. It's the only explanation I can find for an aristocratic trustafarian to be so smitten with a violent man with a history of rape that she'll sacrifice everything to be with him and have his children.

The risk factors were multiple. His violence was ONE risk factor. You cannot legally ban a person from meeting with another person if the 'victim' doesn't want you to ban it. Constance would have had to apply for a protective order herself and she had no desire to do so. I know it's an inconvenient truth but she was a perpetrator of abuse to the children as well as a victim of MG's abuse.

I have not read all the post in this thread. My sense is that this child was going to to be removed from their parents and the parents got desperate.

I believe people like the OP simply refuse to believe that women can be evil or manipulative, just like men. The OP even blames “the system” at one point 🙄 in an attempt to avoid apportioning any blame to her! One of the unfortunate outcomes of “women as victim” narratives we have these days.

If you have no morals and no boundaries then there are no internal restraints, you will just do whatever benefits you in the moment.

@Siff I don't feel the same as you OP and I think YABU. I'm actually quite surprised you even started this thread when you don't/didn't seem to know all the background to this case. The police were trying to find a new-born baby at high risk before it came to harm and pulled out all the stops to do so - and they were right given the way CCTV has shown these excuses for parents were treating the baby before dumping its body in a carrier bag with rubbish on top. The police could have taken your "softly softly" approach with the same outcome and then you'd be criticising them for not taking a more hard-line approach. Honestly, they can't do right for doing wrong with some people.