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?

I don't think the police are responsible. I think her mother contributed to her being damaged. She took her out of boarding school to a cult in Nigeria where she experienced a huge amount of dehumanising abuse.

anytipswelcome,
yes i saw the pics and footage like you, it was quite blurred and the baby was not really so visible. If you were there and saw that the baby had just a babygro you should have said something. I witnessed this a few times in UK and one of the parents response was> "it builds their immune system" which of course i did not agree with. I am not taking sides with the parents, which everyone here seems to have concluded. (I mentioned ealier on that I have been a whistleblower when i witnessed child abuse in my past job, so yes the life of a child matters to me). Also, i just emitted the thought that maybe the mum was just been in an unfortunate situation, caught between her partner and her family. A post partum mum in my experience, is very vulnerable and can have a fragile mental health. Imagine the same mum having to be on the run.. right? She is not crocodile dundee, just a desperate human being clinging to her baby and trying to survive while being chased. it horrifies me really the thought of this.
I just answered the posts question> "a witch hunt" and yes i agree that the Police and authorities conducted a witchhunt relentlellesly, deploying huge numbers of offficers(payed with our taxes btw) which led to the parents going on a run with baby.
which led to disastrous results for the baby. If those parents did not love their baby why then did they not leave him behind to someone or a friend? because somehow the mum (at least possibly not the dad) loved her baby and didnt want to be separated from her. Which led to a panicked survival displacement(exode) and that didnt help the babys survival.
It was handed wrong that is my opinion, responding to the post's question.
Also, adressed to all agressive responses here(not yours which is respectfull and intelligent) if we all had the same opinion and thoughts and points of view, life would be very boring indeed and posts like this one would not exist. Think about this, next time you guys berate someone from voicing their opinion. We are lucky enough to live in a relatively civillised country. If you dont like people voicing different opinions, maybe you guys should move to North Korea..(again not adressed to you "anytipswelcome")

Only 14 years each is disgusting and an insult to their murdered baby. Lock them both up for life and throw away the keys. They should never be freed to procreate again.

yes i agree to your comment, I read about this too.

completely agree with you. its not black and white, nothing is. the parents were demonised and hunted. It endangered the life of the baby, completlely the opposite of what they said they were trying to do. and alerting the whole nation about evil mother and dad on the run" cornered the unstable parents even further, compromising the survival of the infant. Depressing

dont worry, some people are illiterate nowadays, dumbed down by staring at phone screens all day..

You literally have no idea what you're talking about.

Go back to staring at your own phone screen.

I did not quite understand why they were chased like criminals as soon as the mum got pregnant. Likely because she is from a high up family tied to the royals(the dad was one of Diana's and Charle's page if I remember well).
Lets look at what would have happened if they had been allowed to stay warm in the flat they were living in, the mother having been allowed to have a normal peacefull pregnancy and not have to be chased and forced to give birth in a car.

Marten gave birth in Dec 2022 in a holiday-let flat (and left it trashed). She chose not to rent a permanent home, despite having more than enough money to do so. She then chose to take a days-old baby on a road trip - and the only reason anyone knew she had been pregnant was because she also took the placenta with her, which was found in her car.

Social Services had spent three years trying to work with Marten before removing her two oldest children into care, because of serious concern about neglect and for their safety. She abandoned her third child in hospital, despite being warned of the consequences. Her fourth child was taken into care at birth because of the above.

Marten got pregnant in March 2022. She wasn't being "chased" then. She wasn't being "chased as a criminal" in Dec 2022/Jan 2023. The Police (in a number of forces) were looking for her because of the - as it turned out well-founded - fear of threat to the safety of a new-born child and concerns about her own health.

"Let's look at what would have happened".Yes, let's. If the police had not acted, the child, Victoria, may or mat not have survived infancy. If she did, she would have been raised in neglect and squalor, unregistered, unknown, kept outside of the health, education and other systems that would have kept her safe - despite the mother being in receipt each year of an amount of money each year that many loving parents in this country can only dream of having.

So, whilst you're of course entitled to your own views @Chamille please don't make up nonsense to try and justify them.

Who are you talking to?? You'd be hilarious if this conversation didn't revolve around a killed baby.

Based on Constance Marten’s own testimony, what would have happened is that they have handed her over to a complete stranger they found on Gumtree.

Chamille, are you aware of the plan they intended to put into action had the authorities not been alerted to the fact that they had had a baby?

Had the police and other authorities remained unaware of the baby they planned to advertise on Gumtree for someone to leave the baby with for a few months while they went to Ireland to find somewhere to live. Then the person from Gumtree would smuggle the baby over to Ireland to join them. Presumably on another baby’s passport.

Would you leave your tiny baby with a person from Gumtree? Given that no qualified or regulated child carer would accept such a job? So essentially a people trafficker?

And this plan would have involved MG absconding from his required attendance at police stations as a sex offender released from prison on licence.

She is a mother who left one baby in the maternity unit and would not take a COVID test in order to re-enter the unit to take the baby home. He is the doting father who when CM was pushed or fell out of a window would not allow paramedics into the house to attend to her, and they had to get police to assist them to examine her. She had a ruptured liver as a result of the fall.

He is the man who assaulted two female police officers in a maternity unit in Wales. When he was sent to prison CM was given support and placements in Mother and Baby care, which she kept leaving as she couldn’t cooperate. She went straight back to MG when he was released.

When in temporary foster care one of her children became very ill. The foster carer needed parental permission to take the small child to the GP, which CM refused. Later the child became so ill that the carer ignored the lack of Co sent and took the child to a doctor. The child was hospitalised with an extremely serious chest infection.

And many more examples of their neglect. Missing months of visits to the children in contact centres because they refused to visit centres that did not have CCTV. When SWs told her the oldest child was distressed and upset that they didn’t turn up and was missing them she replied that she ‘had to think of the bigger picture’

Social workers told her she needed to cooperate with Social Services and separate from MG if she wanted to keep her children: she chose him.

’rich families’, however emotionally dysfunctional, as hers undoubtedly was, cannot simply take control of the family courts and have children removed. Different SS teams across England and Wales, and different Family Court judges are involved in the removal of the 4 eldest children. Can you explain how a family could have taken control of the decisions of all those agencies over a 6 year period ?

She's not some defenceless little fox being chased by a pack of beagles. If you're going to go with the animal analogy, she's more like a pedigree sow gone feral that's had to have piglets removed because there's a good chance that she'll flatten or eat them left to her own devices.

@Chamille please read this post, which has some of the proven facts about these people.

These were not scared people cornered by a heavy-handed police hunt. They had abused and at times abandoned multiple children over years. The police knew how much of a danger they were to Victoria because of their multiple past actions, that's why they tried so hard to find them, to save a defenceless baby's life. Marten and Gordon had the money and resources to live very safely and comfortably but chose to endanger their child instead. They were planning to leave her with a stranger off Gumtree! They are arrogant selfish people who only care about themselves and have demonstrated consistently that they cannot care for or prioritise their own children.

That's what led to Victoria's death. Not the actions of the police or of Marten's family, the actions of Marten and Gordon who chose to endanger her not because they had to, but because they chose to, they are completely selfish.

Absolutely appalling case, poor little baby didn't stand a chance :( if ever there were a case to demonstrate why sometimes the only thing social services can do to protect a child is to remove them from their parents, this is it.

I had-quite probably wrongly- made an assumption that there were addiction issues at play in this case, which was driving the erratic, impulsive behaviour, but this doesn't seem to be mentioned if it is the case. The summary the judge gave-or rather, the parts I caught-didn't outline a MH condition in either case, did it? (correct me if I am wrong, as I may have missed this).

It seems they both chose to live in the way they did; not through illness, poverty, necessity-but because they wanted to. Utterly bizarre.

It's a very sad case, my sympathy is with baby Victoria and the older children.
Netflix will be sniffing around for their latest documentary.

There didn't appear to be any addiction issues and as far as I know no diagnosed MH conditions either. Though it seems clear some MH issue (with both of them) fuelled their actions and behaviour over a number of years.

One thing that hasn't been commented on is that Marten had five children in six (seven?) years, in far from stable circumstances, which must also have had an impact.

No.

Stop with the nonsense, whoever you are. Everything you write in defence of a woman whose actions led directly to the death of her fifth child - not to mention the abusive neglect and trauma inflicted on her first four children - is provably wrong.

Question: why are you so keen to support a woman who couldn't be bothered to clean or bury her dead infant, and instead discarded the faeces-caked body to rot in a shopping bag, into which she'd thrown empty beer cans and sandwich wrappings?

You are of course fully entitled to your own opinion. You are not, however, entitled to your own facts. You do not seem to understand the difference.

yes i saw the pics and footage like you, it was quite blurred and the baby was not really so visible. If you were there and saw that the baby had just a babygro you should have said something.

If you saw the footage, then you saw the child in a pushchair wearing just a babygro with no coat or hat. It was perfectly clear.

Please read @RantzNotBantz's post which is based on proven facts not denied by either of the accused, and think carefully about whether it is just possible you may be mistaken.

Duplicated post

If those parents did not love their baby why then did they not leave him behind to someone or a friend? because somehow the mum (at least possibly not the dad) loved her baby and didnt want to be separated from her. Which led to a panicked survival displacement(exode) and that didnt help the babys survival.

IME, parents usually love their children. It was certainly the case in one I was involved with professionally. Unfortunately their strange beliefs and inadequacies meant the baby had skull and hip deformities from being left lying for so long, and was covered in sores from not having wet nappies changed.

They absolutely loved her. They were also absolutely shit parents.

@Chamille Many people on here have put the time and effort into researching the way this pair behaved long before the fifth pregnancy and the unnecessary squalid conditions and parental behavior inflicted on their four previous children.
I'd suggest you do. Romantic persecuted loving but hapless parents they aren't.

You seem to be inventing 'facts' to support feelings.

The first baby wasn't taken away until years later, (following her window 'fall' and allegations of DV as well as poor conditions) and her parents didn't alert SS.

The reason she was listed as needing to be watched out for at maternity clinics in the first place is because she refused to follow up on pre natal concerns that her unborn baby had been exposed to the Zika virus in Peru, and that she might be carrying it herself and a danger to others.

She knew all the way down the line that healthcare workers would look in askance at that, and must have had concerns about attitudes about him as a father on the sex offenders list coming out, but wasn't prepared to not have him around for the birth etc.

She turned up in Wales with both of them using false ID's and where swiftly seen through as they tried to con their way to what was assumed to be an instant top of the housing list using her preconceptions about her abilities to deceive, and deluded ideas about Irish travelers, and councils handing out free housing to them, presenting a situation that she thought would swing them instant public housing, under new identities that meant neither's past failures or crimes would come to attention.

Rather than the reality others would have seen, a SW rightly seeing a parade of red flags fluttering over this baby.

Trying to wriggle out of her lies, she then agreed to contact her father who offered £1000 immediately and to fund whatever was needed in housing expenses, which made her low down the list for emergency council housing.
Her lies busted, she still threatened to take the baby to a very unsanitary tent, if she wasn't given social housing, and was warned it was beyond unsuitable. She accepted a mother and baby placement instead, still believing this would result in them getting social housing.

It's in that unit that her poor parenting first came under focus and was documented, and there that she was clearly warned about positional asphyxia and the dangers of co sleeping.
She later left for private rented accommodation with the baby and him, and went on to have the next child moving from borough to borough in London.
Nothing to do with her parents interference, (though I don't doubt there later was) unless you count her dad unwittingly announcing wealth and options to SS when CM put them in contact.

If they had taken the baby the baby would be alive.

All these 2 selfish twats wanted to do was have one over on the social services. The baby was of no concern to either of them as they showed over and over again.

You are being incredibly offensive. Give it a rest

The disgraceful behaviour during the sentencing. Told three times to stop passing notes and she has the absolute temerity to complain about her pen being taken away
'im entitled to a pen'.
Doesn't that just tell you everything.

I think the judge allowed their behaviour to play out in court so that the world could see them. The revolving door of legal teams, the passing of notes to each other, the constant deliberate delays to the trial, too tired, toothache, the chatting like disruptive teenagers at the back of class, the bemoaning around what time the prison van collected her. Worst of all the deliberate attempt to throw the trial by CM by deliberately announcing his rape conviction to the jury.