Constance Marten & Mark Gordon - Baby A case

[SportMum1982]

What have I just read? What the actual fuck is wrong with the world. That poor baby. These utter idiots. Sorry I’m so so angry.

Constance Marten and partner ‘killed baby to keep her out of care’

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/24e56090-f175-4bf8-ac07-380621d9954f?shareToken=186074e86c05c4df704ef1889186acdc

Would have made more sense for her to delay getting pregnant until they had gone abroad, surely? Seems like either events overtook them, or planning and realistic outcomes wasn't a forte.

I do get that mothers are experience trauma when children are removed from their care, but surely you'd want to use contraception and not risk another being removed?

I do wonder if the national news on them exacerbated and ramped up the situation. Would there have been a different outcome if tracking had been more covert, though it seems they were either quite paranoid and/or being tracked by family or private detectives anyway. If they had felt safe in hotels/short term lets baby Victoria might be alive still.

Constance Martin's KC can't stop her taking the stand is she wants to. He can advise her not to, but it is always the Defendant's decision in the end. I suspect he strongly advised her not to, but CM obviously has very strongly held beliefs which she seems determined to share!

Maybe, or she might have been handed to a stranger they met on gumtree with the promise of meeting them in Peru 🤷🏼‍♀️
these parents lived in an alternate reality. I'm sorry to sound harsh but they did. Their idea of planning and of life in general is so removed from the norm who can say what they would have done to Victoria and what harm she may have come to.

So CM’s world view is that despite knowing how far away from “normal” her choices and behaviour have been, she can convince a jury that she is innocent. That seems beyond deluded.

And aside from the right to make one’s own choices, it really does sound like she accidentally smothered her, because she was so knackered.

And the baby eventually wasn’t in a fit state for a conclusive cause of death verdict, so we will never really know. But instead she says she “wasn’t alive.” Like an external event she had nothing whatsoever to do with.

Delusions of persecution combined with grandiosity. I think they see themselves in an ‘us against the world’ way. Lots of blaming the press for making them look like bad people according to Marten today. Everyone is to blame apparently for the poor baby’s death and Marten and Gordon are merely innocent victims. 🙄

@RowanMayfair I hear you. Just trying to figure out some sort of logic to the chaos (like wouldn't you just flee the country if you knew you were pregnant and you were desperate to 'escape?') but I think that's a trail that petered out long ago with these two. Things have just gone so tragically wrong, and their disordered thinking is their responsibility. Not trying to absolve them from responsibility for a newborn who could do nothing but rely on them.

She could well be telling the truth about falling asleep on the baby. We will never know. Maybe I just prefer to think that rather than wondering if she died of hypothermia - which seems such a cruel and unnecessary death rather than something accidental.

I can actually understand her saying the baby was 'no longer alive', it seems so much less harsh than the baby was dead.

Selfish, to conceive another child when fairly obviously they haven't been able to care for the other 4. She's either a bit mad or pretending to be.

I guess the psych assessments will figure that one out.

It's just a gigantic mess.

She claims she’s an excellent mother.

She must be very unwell (or worse).

SS get slated on here, but they did the right thing removing the other children.

yes, the disordered decision making. It only makes sense, for want of a better word, if it is overlaid with paranoia and also the huge entitlement that she felt she (by her own appalling judgement) deserved to have the baby with her at all costs.

Yet manages to function on some level, book hotels, manage cash flow, buy cars, clothes and food for her and MG.
But can’t manage to clothe or hold a baby correctly.

That bit of CCTV footage of her handling the baby like a sack of spuds into the pram is haunting. Who holds a newborn like that?

It’s madness but not as we know it. The other option is the one we don’t want to know about.

I suspect the latter - lack of natural feeling, concealed from themselves as well as others.

Does anybody know how much longer the trial is expected to last?

@Supersimkin2 what is the other option? Breeding to order like she said her family said :( i dont know what you infer

Originally it was supposed to be finished by 8th March I believe... but with the fire at the Old Bailey and Constance Martin changing her KC as often as most people change their socks, it has had a number of delays and will still be a while yet.
The prosecution is still cross examining and then if no further witnesses are called there will be closing speeches by KCs on both sides and a summing up by the judge... not before the end of the week certainly (they aren't sitting tomorrow - continuing on Wednesday)

All of this makes you appreciate a few things:

-there's a reason for checks on renters & no self respecting landlord will just take cash as rent.

-those security checks at the airport, they're not there to check us every day folk, they know who they are looking/waiting for.

@Tigresswoods also social services who saved 4 kids.

Agreed! I read some of the comments made in court. SS remove children as a last resort.

That's right. Remembering that she was placed in a parent and baby placement with first baby and went home afterwards, and also that removing children is only the start of care proceedings which then go on for at least 6 months in which time interventions should be put in place to address the issues with the aim of returning the children at the end.

I'm intrigued to see what comes out of this following a verdict. I'm sure we don't know half of it.

I can’t get my head around that they’re pleading not guilty. Their defence teams must be just going through the motions because there literally is nothing to be done to absolve themselves AND a total lack of insight.

I expect CM is insisting on speaking 'her truth'; truth has become malleable in the minds of many now that we live in the world of 'alternative facts'.

Her defence team will be working as hard as they do on any case. I actually think they have a good chance of getting off the manslaughter charge. It can't be proved they caused her death. I mean obviously they did, through neglect, but the jury need to be convinced they directly caused it. The other charges are fairly clear cut though.

It’s Gross Negligence Manslaughter isn’t it? Which is;

1. “The defendant owed an existing duty of care to the victim.
2. The defendant negligently breached that duty of care.
3. At the time of the breach there was a serious and obvious risk of death. Serious, in this context, qualifies the nature of the risk of death as something much more than minimal or remote. Risk of injury or illness, even serious injury or illness, is not enough. An obvious risk is one that is present, clear, and unambiguous. It is immediately apparent, striking and glaring rather than something that might become apparent on further investigation.
4. It was reasonably foreseeable at the time of the breach of the duty that the breach gave rise to a serious and obvious risk of death.
5. The breach of the duty caused or made a significant (i.e. more than minimal) contribution to the death of the victim.
6. In the view of the jury, the circumstances of the breach were truly exceptionally bad and so reprehensible as to justify the conclusion that it amounted to gross negligence and required criminal sanction.”

So the contention will be at 5 and 6 I think.

How many times has CM changed her lawyer?

MG’s lawyer had to stop
representing him too. Does the classic reason apply, one wonders.