On-the-run mother Constance Marten has wept in court in the UK as she denied endangering her baby, saying: “I did nothing but show her love.”
The aristocrat (36) and her partner Mark Gordon (49) are on trial over the death of baby Victoria while living off-grid in a tent on the South Downs in wintry conditions last year.
Victoria was found dead in a Lidl bag last March 1st, 2023, after the couple had been on the run for seven weeks in a bid to prevent her being taken into care as four siblings had been.
On Thursday, Marten went into the witness box at the Old Bailey to give evidence in her defence.
Her barrister Francis FitzGibbon KC asked her: “Did you do anything to harm baby Victoria?”
Marten replied: “Absolutely not.”
Mr FitzGibbon said: “Did you do anything cruel to baby Victoria?”
Marten said: “No. I did nothing but show her love.”
Mr FitzGibbon said: “So far as you are concerned, did you give her anything less than the proper care you thought she deserved?”
Marten replied: “I gave her the best that any mother would, yeah.”
She told jurors Victoria died last January 9th, saying: “I do not think it is anything I will ever move on from.
“I feel guilty because she was in my arms. I feel like it’s not an easy thing to live with. I think initially it was disbelief, shock, intense grief.”
Mr FitzGibbon said: “What happened to Victoria?”
Marten replied: “I had her in my jacket and when I woke up my head was on the floor. And when I was sitting up and when I woke up she was not alive.”
She told jurors she considered cremating Victoria after placing her inside the supermarket bag.
She said: “I had a thousand different thoughts going on in my head. I immediately panicked.
“I just didn’t know what to do. They are going to have a field day out of this – the media and press and social services, everyone.
“She was in my care and the next thing she died. I thought, ‘How am I going to get my kids back now Victoria has passed away’?”
Marten said that in the end she could not bring herself to burn Victoria’s body.
Gordon suggested they “call it quits” and “just have a fire and say goodbye to life”, jurors were told.
The defendant said: “We had just had enough by that point.”
Earlier, Marten told jurors she came from a wealthy family and was privately educated before studying Arabic at Leeds University.
She travelled extensively and worked for Al Jazeera, the Middle Eastern news station, before she met Gordon in an Indian incense shop in 2014, and they married in a Peruvian ceremony.
She had a “long history of issues” with her family, who never met Gordon.
She said her trust fund was “cut off overnight” when she was expecting her first child, but she was receiving £2,000 a month after the birth of her second.
Marten became tearful when she was asked if she had ever harmed any of her five children.
She said: “Mark and I love our kids more than anything in the world, so I’m pretty angry about the fact they had to go through this process. It’s not good enough.”
Challenged on the prosecution suggestion that she and Gordon put their interests ahead of the children, she said: “No, there is literally nothing I would not do for my children.”
By December 2022 she was moving around the country to avoid social services taking her unborn baby away, jurors heard.
On December 24th, 2022, Victoria was born in secret in the bedroom of a hired cottage in Park View, Northumberland, the court heard.
Marten said: “I wanted to keep Victoria with us, so I did not want to tell anyone about the birth.
“I was in good health physically, but I was in a high state of anxiety. I thought someone was going to bash down the door and take her away. I was joyful but at the same time anxious.”
On January 5th, last year, the couple fled the scene when their car burst into flames on a motorway near Bolton, Greater Manchester, with Marten leaving behind her bag, bank card and 34 burner phones.
Greater Manchester Police launched a nationwide search after a placenta was also found in the burnt-out vehicle.
Marten described travelling from the North West to Essex, where she first learned of the media alert from a member of the public.
She said: “I think Mark and I were in a state of panic with all the media attention and not knowing what to do. I was hyper vigilant.”
They moved on to East Ham in east London to try to blend in but found the “opposite effect”, she said.
“We wanted to get a flat in East Ham but we realised there was no way that was going to happen.
“Our options were slowly diminishing, so we thought let’s get a tent and lay low, away from prying eyes,” Marten said.
They travelled to the port of Newhaven in East Sussex with a view to potentially smuggling themselves abroad, jurors heard.
Marten said they were only going to stay in the tent they had bought for a maximum of two days and then hire a holiday cottage.
Asked if she was concerned about Victoria being too cold, she said: “Of course, she was my baby. I worried about her all the time.
“If I thought for one second the cold would affect her, or it was too cold, or we did not have enough items to keep her warm, we would not stay in that position.”
On whether a tent was a good place for a young baby, Marten said: “It would be preferable to be in a house, that’s just common sense. But at no point did we think she was in any danger.
“She was our pride and joy.”
The day before her death, Victoria “seemed fine” and was feeding and sleeping well, Marten said.
She said it was “harrowing” and “too much to take in” when she found Victoria had died.
But she did not seek medical attention because the baby was definitely not alive, Marten added.
The defendants, of no fixed address, deny manslaughter by gross negligence, perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty and causing or allowing the death of a child.
The Old Bailey trial was adjourned until Friday.
