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

It really isn’t, if anything children are left for far too long in situations that are intolerable. A lot of work is done with women to support their parenting but ultimately when domestic violence escalates, protecting the children through removal becomes the option of last resort.

In this case it’s alleged he threw her out of a window, at what point do you think a newborn should be protected in those circumstances.

@kidscanwatchcbeebies

Im am adoptive mum and now a foster carer.
Its surprising how many people still think that social services can just simply remove children at will.

My experience with my son and his three siblings, all in care and or adopted, is that his mum was given lots of support and opportunities to keep her children but she kept going back to the fathers. I do think there were failings in her past before she had her own children but its not as simple as saying just support the mothers.
With my last foster child, we don't yet know what went on in his home, but given the extent of his trauma when the truth comes out its going to be pretty bad. He wont talk to the police however, neither will his siblings who remain in the family home. The family are getting a lot of support but quite frankly those children are at risk.

@Over40Overdating Brilliant and very moving post. Sums it all up and reduced me to tears.

You know the police don’t control the media right? They can put out their own statements, but the media took it and ran.

they won’t have put any sort of media statement out without a risk analysis. If they’re actively evading authorities, chance are they’ll have ditched phones, avoid public places with cctv and use cash. With no electronic tracking, the only way to find these people was to hope someone sees them and comes forward. So the only way to find them was a public campaign.

chances are they needed to give the full story and emphasise the risk to the baby to stop anyone thinking it was baby stealing social services, because many people do think that way still. It needed to be clear that they were the risk so people would assist in the search, and not dismiss it as two misunderstood people wanting to stop their baby being taken from them.

police don’t do stuff for shits and giggles you know, they are professionals who deal with this every day. They know the risks. What makes you think you know better?

So many other countries allow open adoption and provide a chance for abusive and neglectful parents to keep traumatising their birth children even when these are unfit to care for them.

From the BBC article - this pair had form for being deceptive. They actively avoided antenatal and other appointments, she lied about who she was when she gave birth for the first time, he refused to even give his name to midwives, he was convicted for assaulting 2 officers who tried to intervene, they had lots and lots of opportunities for support and rejected them all, they regularly changed addresses to avoid checks. Then when their children were taken into care, they didn't turn up for contact.

Two very dangerous people who have clear issues and who were not capable of keeping their children safe. I hope their first four children go on to have happy lives.

Except in this case it isn’t a poor vulnerable, PND addled mum.
It’s an arrogant, entitled, paranoid woman and her sociopathic rapist partner seeing a newborn baby as a way to prove ‘the man’ or ‘the system’ has no dominion over them. It was a power play. Nothing more.

Are you honestly telling me their actions - being wrapped in puffa coats and scarves whilst their newborn was in a buggy with no blanket, wrapping her remains in a used nappy and putting her in a shopping bag, tossing her aside on an allotment with the same care as a sandwich wrapper and refusing to allow her body to be found to give her some dignity are the actions of good parents under pressure by the nasty police?

Their behaviour in court, where everyone was blamed for their actions but themselves and their repeated firing of legal counsel and complaints about the stress of trial days being so long and only having microwaved food speak volumes. Not once have they accepted their negligence killed that child. Not once have they shown any sorrow or remorse.

I am no fan of the police but they knew they were dangers to that baby and that these two selfish pieces of shit would stop at nothing to ‘win’ even if it meant another abandoned child.

I disagree with you completely OP for all the reasons others have given above.
The police knew the whole history of these two, their criminal records, their previous history of failure to care for their children.

Just recently I've been hearing police appeals on the radio for the mum of the three babies abandoned in London. Those appeals are full of compassion and understanding for the mother. The police approach is proportionate.

Contstance Marten was given support, including supervisied contact with her children, which she regularly refused to attend. If she had put her children first, there was a good chance that she could have kept them. In every case, she chose a violent rapist over her kids.

Not necessarily - if you read Helen Rumbelow’s excellent piece in the Times today - the couple had visitation rights with the older children but didn’t take them up because they wanted to conceal the new pregnancy. We (rightly) don’t know - and will never know - whether it was a closed adoption or not.

That's a fair point, they tried to pass it off as an accident while they were fixing their TV aerial.

Sorry I don't agree. Ultimately there are sadly cases where children need to be taken away for their own safety. There's no messaging the police could have honestly put out there which would've ruled that out. The threshold for children being taken into care / put up for adoption is actually extremely high, probably too high.

No it was a convicted armed rapist and the woman who flatly refused to leave him who had shown time after time that she put him before the kids, who endangered a newborn with their poor decision making that led to the baby's death. They didn't even turn up to see their other kids on contact days after they got taken into care.
Please do more reading on this case because it's not how it was being presented in the media up to this point at all.

It used to be. But then I think quite rightly the children's safety was given precedent. And then the mother would be given support and hopefully the children returned.

I used to support women fleeing domestic violence and the service ignored the children, to the point that I was begging social workers to remove children. I ended up in court after one case where the father murdered all of the children to get at the mother and then eventually murdered her.

Ideally they would all be supported more than they are.

No evidence of that. She said that is not what happened, so did he. Police may have strong reasons to suspect that he assaulted her or pushed her but without solid proof and no witnesses you can't just lock someone up.

No, I disagree. I read the BBC article this morning about how they behaved in court, delaying the trial, refusing to attend, shouting, arguing, and Gorden choosing to represent himself which lead to him cross examining Martin (wtf?). They are clearly very disturbed, entitled people that feel the normal rules and laws of society don't apply to them. They are so wrapped up in themselves and each other they dont care about anything, even the life of a tiny baby. The police should have gone harder.

He’s a violent convicted rapist and she chose him over her children. Did her post natal distress explain her appalling behaviour in court and to the judge years later? Do you have any sympathy for the poor police officer who found the decomposed body of their baby who was stuffed in a plastic bag covered by dirty nappies and other rubbish?

Yes exactly. That’s where the real failure is sadly.

Especially since he'd already done 20 years for armed rape in the US before they deported him halfway through the 40 year sentence he should still be serving. It's a shame there was no cross-border agreement to recall him to prison if he did anything over here.

In cases of domestic violence or abuse it does worry me that the default action seems to be removal of the child(ren) rather than support of the mother.

That isn’t a comment on this specific case, it’s a general observation.

I feel the police were in a hard place too as with the money she had access to and possibly contacts and help to evade them they needed public information to fill in gaps as she wasn’t the usual on the run with no funds person

No, and I think some of your statements are outrageous. They tried the softly softly approach, these people were never going to just surface because the police were saying “there’s a good little poppet” or whatever.

This.