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

[Siff]

I know Constance Marten and her partner made dangerous and illegal choices, and I’m not excusing that — a baby died and that’s heartbreaking. But I can’t stop thinking about the way the case was handled and whether the police have some responsibility in how things unfolded.

As a mum of four who’s struggled mentally after birth, I keep thinking: if I had just given birth, was vulnerable, and felt like the whole world was hunting me down — would I have thought clearly? Probably not. The media coverage was intense, and the police were everywhere. The pressure must have been overwhelming.

I honestly believe the fear created by the police operation pushed them into making more and more desperate and risky decisions to stay hidden. It wasn’t just a search — it felt like a witch hunt. No safeguarding, no attempt to reach her as a vulnerable mother, just a hard push to capture and punish.

I think that approach had consequences. The police must take some responsibility for creating the kind of fear and pressure that led to this tragedy. The way they went about it likely made things worse — not better — for the baby.

It’s easy to say she was selfish or unstable, but mental health in the postnatal period is fragile. People don’t always think rationally when terrified. I just wish there had been more humanity in how it was all handled.
Anyone else feel the same?

“ From what I learned recently“

On Facebook,

You’re talking utter shit

Yeah, she isnt controlled by him.

Even if they did, what they would have been looking for was

a white woman with dark hair, with or without a baby,
a white woman with dark hair, with or without a black male,
a white woman with dark hair, with or without a baby and a black male
a white woman wearing a hat so you couldn't see her hair colour, with or without a baby, a black male or both
a white woman wearing a coat with a hood over her head with or without any of the above.
a black male with or without a white woman and/or a baby.
a white woman who may have cut her hair, bleached her hair, tied it back, worn a wig.

Mathematically, even you had every CCTV operator in the UK staring at screens trying to see if there was a white woman/black male/baby and all applicable permutations, the number of those that cross a CCTV lens every minute of the day and night probably rivals the requirement for an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite length of time to write the complete works of Shakespeare.

She didn't get the chance because she put a violent rapist before her children, her choice - i'm glad we live in a society that does it's best - most of the time, to keep children safe from abusive dangerous parents.
Read the facts this poor little soul did not need to die, she had barely any clothes on in bitter cold ,her parents don't deserve sympathy.

Tbf my children's adoption plan was put together in 2000, which is a world away in terms of social work practice. Even if these meetings do take place (and I have seen the full files and there is no mention of police being consulted), my point remains, why isn't it a crime to eg starve your children?

How are people still not understanding this? Even after 700 odd posts, many of which point out that Mark Gordon is a RAPIST.
I honestly cannot work out if some of these posters are members of the tinfoil hat brigade or just as thick as mince.

A strat is the very first part of how either a CP plan starts or there is threshold for issuing. Either way a strategy discussion always takes place and would have done back then too.

Lots of crimes are recorded but are NFA, child neglect is one of them quite often.

No, it’s on them, the pair of them chose to act so selfishly and in such a cruel manner, not the police.

I'd like to see your evidence that open adoptions are more successful in UK-like settings?

You don't seem to be aware that open adoption is allowed in the UK, in fact social services have to tell the judge whether this will happen, and if not why not.

When I was adopting 16 years ago, I was put forward as the preferred adopter for a child whose birth father would have continued direct contact. I got turned down because he vetoed me (because I'm a lesbian).

We were under a lot of pressure to allow continued contact with foster carers, despite the fact that they wouldn’t follow the plans to transition the children to our care, and continued to ignore carefully crafted plans for limited contact post placement. My DD was abused in their care and professionals still wanted ongoing contact, because they needed to keep the foster carers on board. Not until I could prove they were actively harmful to my children could we get agency agreement to stop contact.

I was in social work in 2004 and strategy meetings were not much different then but I do take your point.
As far as the evidence threshold to prove criminal neglect - that's for CPS to answer but it's the same story as many crimes, especially when children are the victims sadly.

CM and MG don’t and didn’t give a flying fuck about any of their children. They are far too obsessed with their each other and their twisted “love story”. The children were all just a byproduct of that. The way Victoria was treated by them after her death- chucked in a carrier bag with a loaf of rubbish speaks volumes. Those 2 not turning up to most of their contact visits with their other children does too. Imagine keeping your own children waiting for you to show up for an hour or 2 hours or maybe longer and the crushing, painful blow to them when you just don’t? And then just merrily carrying on having more babies to potentially treat that way.

Children's safety needs to come first, then support of the mother. Abuse victims find it very difficult to leave for a variety of reasons and children need to be kept safe. My siblings and I grew up in an abusive and neglectful home and it's not what any child deserves.

And there is a huge emphasis on supervised visitation and family reunification if possible. Removal is really a last resort.

@Siff What I keep coming back to is this: the police and media didn’t need to broadcast a full-scale manhunt in the way they did. Publicly, they could’ve taken a softer tone — something like: “We are not pursuing this as a criminal matter. We just want to make sure mum and baby are safe. Constance, you’re not in trouble, please come forward.”

Her parents made this statement practically word for word. These people were both completely deranged and unsafe and needed to be found. It was not a case of them being pushed by any outside forces - look at their history.

OK so why NFA? Marten and Wood were convicted of child cruelty among other things. Surely if you have your children removed for starving them, not changing nappies so they have to be cut off....I simply dont understand why they don't prosecuted. Is there just an understanding that the children are safe now, they didnt die so what's the point?

There are different standards of proof in family law (balance of probabilities) and criminal cases (beyond reasonable doubt).

That's especially important when several adults could responsible, but there aren't any outside witnesses.

These are for CPS and police to answer, I'm not sure you're going to get any helpful answers to that on this thread

Wait for someone to pop up and make that CM's families fault too...

This doesn't surprise me. Look at all the threads here on MN where someone is concerned for a child and gets told to "keep their beak out", the mum is probably doing her best and a visit from the police or social services might tip her over the edge, etc.

How did social services become involved in the first place? Is it because the hospital initiated an alert after she didn’t attend important antenatal appointments? Did she then rock up an a hospital and pretend to be a traveller?

Just read that Gross Negligence Manslaughter can carry a maximum life imprisonment penalty. Hee haw chance this sorry pair will get that. I'm hoping she's kept out of circulation long enough for her 'reproductive career' to draw naturally to a close. Can't rely on her actually coming to her senses.

Won't fix the problem of him being able to breed with all and sundry when he gets out. But 1 outta 2 ain't bad, to paraphrase Meatloaf.

I think the first alert was because she had travelled through Zika countries in S America while pregnant and needed monitoring. As a result of which there was a home visit to her dwelling, a small tent bowing under collected rain, surrounded by bottles of piss, on wasteland behind a Tesco.

It is absolutely horrific. All of it is just so needless!😢

@RantzNotBantz think there's more between that.
She (they?) had been traveling in South America, a place rife with a Zika epidemic at the time, so potentially in contact with the Zika virus.
Zika syndrome through the mother can cause serious birth defects in babies including microcephaly. (tiny heads, brains and LD's) She'd not had any expected prior contact with pre natal services, and walked away from the only one she did attend, despite the need for monitoring for the virus.
An alert was put out to anti natal clinics to keep an eye out for her because it isn't just her and the baby she's carrying, it's the potential to infect others if she had it, and the likelihood she'd now lie to other clinics about where she'd been.

Given what's known about her general behaviors, it's likely the clinic felt she was particularly high risk to both the baby others and herself.

She then turned up elsewhere already in labor, pretending to be an entirely previously undocumented Irish traveler who'd been thrown out, with a 'friend' who they both claimed was not the father, in tow. The story was seen through quickly enough and the alert picked up on. His behavior resulted in the police being called, which resulted in him attacking the police officers when questioned about who they both where, for which he went to prison.

SS was then automatically involved because of the level of parental violence and imprisonment, as well as general WTF is going on here, and she took the SW to a flimsy festival tent 'bowed down with water' behind a supermarket, saying it's where they had been living and she intended to take the baby there if not given a council house. She was given a supervised mother and baby placement instead of what she'd expected to happen.
It goes on from there, but this is someone who doesn't learn positive lessons about their own stupidity from such experiences, just what does and doesn't work when trying to get their own way over everyone else.

Won't fix the problem of him being able to breed with all and sundry when he gets out.

He's already 50 or over, isn't he? By the time he gets out there might not be too many women of childbearing age queueing up.