Constance Marten and Mark Gordon Case #4

[KatieMorag]

The CCTV is heartbreaking. I feel like almost anyone in the world would extend more basic care to a baby than the care it was receiving from that 'so-called' mother. Honestly I could give that baby to my SEN teenage son and he'd be clueless, but I KNOW he'd hold it so carefully and wrap it up warm, maybe even taking off his own clothes to do so, and make sure it had space around its face and could breathe. I know it. It's not maternal or even in any way a childcare skill, it's basic fucking humanity. Those 'parents' are devoid of it.

 

[pommobear]

I was thinking about this case today as one of my son's fellow home educated friends is currently very unwell with tonsillitis and has been for about 10 days yet his mother refuses even to give him calpol let alone take him to the GP. Instead she is treating him with manuka honey, soup and air purifiers.

Not the same thing but the mentality of "only I know what's best for my child and I don't trust anyone in authority", whilst taken to an extreme with CM and MG, is nonetheless present in quite a few parents.

 

[Hyacinthsquash]

Funny how she claims she doesn’t agree with authority/hospitals etc but she was happy to abandon baby number 4 in hospital and rely on them to care for it. You can’t really claim to live a nomadic lifestyle whilst accepting money from a trust fund. Not like she was baking her own bread and growing her own veg. Both of them are just tramps with no concern for the lives they’ve ruined. It’s all just collateral in their games.

 

[InTheDollsHouse]

I’ve started the wiki, got the historic info from when they were actually missing, almost up to their arrest, it's not all in order yet.

I’ll add the info / reporting from the trial as it happens, and will go back and do a proper timeline with relevant reporting linked.

Got to stop for school run now so will do more tomorrow.

 

[Ray_of_Sunshine]

Just listening to the podcast. So the man in the van who pulled over to help them when their car was on fire touched Victoria’s head. Marten disputes this as she reckons she would never let someone touch her child. But he remembers it vividly (and is much more credible, let’s be honest) as he’s beat himself up over it since. He says he feels that if he would’ve stayed with them the baby may still be alive. At this point Marten’s mother shouts out “Quite!” in the court. Now, is she agreeing with the poor bloke or saying it in an accusatory way?

 

[casperon]

Just a reminder, she had 9 whole months to plan this. and this was the result. If she wanted to keep her baby, she could have gone abroad and started a new life there. She had the money for it. Instead, she decided to camp in freezing weathers without even a snowsuit for the newborn baby.

 

[Lynn’ssnazzycardigan]

Don’t want to Merail but I have to say congratulations to @Brandshinynew on your sobriety, ODAAT has literally saved my life

I wonder about Constance’s upbringing too, and what that was like. Very strange what happened to her father. She seems to lurch from one disaster to another, getting captured by a cult, taking up with Gordon, I can’t imagine he is a healthy life partner given his past conviction and the horrible way they were living. I’m not trying to find excuses for her behaviour, I just try to understand why she lived like she did. If they wanted to avoid “society” they probably could’ve afforded a farmhouse in the country and kept largely to themselves. Lots of people are eccentric and live alternative lifestyles but they don’t end up causing or allowing the death of their child.

 

[neroli]

I don't think CM is a victim. Far from it. The only victims in my book are their children. I think the pair of them are despicable.

 

[F1Grid]

Constance's mum styles herself as a trauma based therapist, so it's utterly batshit that she's shouting at a random passerby rather than herself for allowing her child to go into a cult, have 4 children removed from her care, and also her false promise in her statement last february that "With all that you have gone through this baby cannot be removed from you"

Aside from the eldest son, Max (the one who had the wedding in Vogue and works in real estate), none of the other kids appear to have had any success. Constance is self explanatory, and the other is helping out with his dad's tree surgeon antics.

Oh and Daddy Napier decided to abandon the family when Constance was 9 to go whale watching and live in a lorry. Wasn't at Max's wedding, just as Constance wasn't despite calling his wife her bestie multiple times on instagram.

What a waste of private school fees.

 

[Lynn’ssnazzycardigan]

Sorry if it’s been said but I can’t remember. Were their other children ultimately adopted out then? Or is it an unknown? Was Constance estranged from her family? I’m trying to guess why no family member took on the children. It’s a huge ask of anybody, I know this from personal experience. I don’t want to out or shame myself but my own children were fostered out to family members while I went through alcohol recovery. It was a hard slog for them and they had to register as foster carers and were paid as such. I can’t imagine being from a family who wouldn’t step up when they were needed the most, especially with big money behind them.

 

[SoOverIt84]

From this it doesn’t look like she was in a baby carrier. It’s awful how she holds her, no support at all.

 

[Ray_of_Sunshine]

I think it depends on the person. My eldest was a bugger for taking off his socks/shoes and I remember old ladies tutting to me about him not having them on in his pram on a shopping centre once (they were in my hand after he had repeatedly thrown them) so people do sometimes take notice but I wouldn’t expect it of someone in a kebab shop who didn’t know if they’d got out of a warm parked car and come straight into the shop. Tbh if you called the police about a baby not dressed appropriately here you would be laughed at, they often don’t even attend for actual crimes

Totally agree and I don’t think it’s fair to give the witnesses stick either just to add. None of this is their fault. It’s so weird but I’m back at college doing an access course and one of my subjects is psychology, we covered the bystander effect just last week. You’d be surprised at what people will walk past or witness and not do anything and I’m talking medical emergencies and crimes taking place in real time. No-one is ringing 999 over a baby not wearing the clothes you think they should be wearing. And if you did you’d probably be chastised by the operator. I think it is pretty commendable these guys have come forward to help get Victoria some kind of justice and put themselves through a trial. Defence ridiculed the dog walker and accused him of embellishing his story I know it’s their job to defend as best they can and they don’t have much to go with here but it still gets up my nose the way witnesses and victims get treated in court

 

[InTheDollsHouse]

Regardless of any bias - unconscious or otherwise - If my neighbour came into my home and kept me there for four hours while repeatedly raping me I think I’d be certain who it was.

Maybe his sentence was longer than it would have been here, but while the US sentence was long, it doesn’t mean a UK sentencing would have been better or the ‘right’ way. His crimes were horrific. He didn’t ‘just’ break in and steal something.

He was 14. Yes, something has gone wrong somewhere, but a child capable of what he did could become a very dangerous man.

He hasn’t exactly settled down and lived an uneventful life.

He is equally responsible for those children - all of them - for the chaos they were born into and for the trauma they will be dealing with for their whole lives.

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

What the hell is wrong with her mum piping up in court?! That poor van driver is yet another victim in this why couldn’t she show him the tiniest bit of respect and not do that? I really hope there is a consequence to this in making the jury think worse of Constance/the Marten legacy.

Also where is her shame?? Her daughter killed her own child…

 

[gimmethattea]

If they truly wanted an autopsy performed on Baby Victoria to determine the cause of death, why didn't they go straight away as soon as they realised she had died?

By leaving her where they did, for as long as they did, it prevented any chance of a proper cause of death to be determined.

This whole case breaks my heart, Baby Victoria should have been nothing but warm, fed, secure and loved. Lots of people out there would give so much to have the opportunity for a baby like this.

 

[InTheDollsHouse]

I’ve just read that one out of the previous four babies, they abandoned in hospital after she had given birth. Literally walked out. Disgusting

A million times better than taking a newborn to an unsafe environment though. It’s probably the best thing she did for that child, despite the fact they will have to live with the trauma of abandonment.

 

[Sparklejeannie]

I disagree with you. By that point the media was very clear that they were wanted by police and that the baby might be in danger. If he didn’t have a mobile phone, he could have gone to pretty much anyone else in that park and asked them to use their phone. The baby was still alive at that point but ALL he did was tell them he recognised them (regardless of his actual words or intentions) so they went back on the run.

What park? This interaction happened around Harwich Port. Not sure calling the police earlier would have changed anything. He did something instinctively as worried for the baby. The only people to blame for any of this tragedy are the very people who should have been looking out for her, her parents.

 

[terfette]

I work with new mothers and their babies and I'd just like to say that even women with quite severe PND, will be careful when handling their baby. One of the signs of PND is a woman insisting that she isn't good enough to look after her baby, or that she isn't capable. The vast majority of PND sufferers will still put their baby first, it's only women who suffer psychosis who will be considered to be a possible danger to their child, and even then, only until they are treated, mum and baby can even stay together during the treatment in some MH units.
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Coming from the other side of the fence, this is 100% true. I suffered with extreme paranoia over my babies. It got to the stage where I suffered sleep deprivation induced psychosis because I would check them hundreds of times a night as I was convinced they'd stopped breathing. If I tried to ignore the urge to check them, I would sweat and shake uncontrollably.

I wouldn't allow knives in the house - for about two years we had one sharp kitchen knife for cooking, which was kept on top of the kitchen cupboards and I was still convinced one of my toddlers would somehow sneak downstairs/away from us, get through the locked kitchen door and scale the cupboards 12ft up to retrieve the knife and horrifically injure themselves.

At one point I sat on the floor in my doctors and ripped half my hair out of my head in the space of half on hour.

Never ONCE has it been suggested that I was unfit or at risk of harming my children. I've had social services involvement and they were so supportive. The odd worker that I've had an issue with, I've complained about and they've sent someone else out immediately to engage with me and I've never seen one I'd complained about again.

 

[repairshoplover]

My friend used to work within social services where she lived. Her job was to get the mum to realise that they needed to put the baby first and not themselves. Some mums worked hard and could keep the baby. But she said quite a few just kept having babies and getting referred to her and said I’ll keep having babies until I can keep one. She was on her 12th baby when my friend left. She said they don’t comprehend how much work they need to do to be able to keep baby so in their heads they keep having them. My friend didn’t return after having her own baby as she said she couldn’t do the job any more now she was a mum herself.

 

[MmmB777]

Absolutely horrendous to think of baby Victoria being heard sceaming in distress to then being totally silent at other points. They watched that baby suffer and decline and could have helped her get the care she needed. Her little lungs, she would have been constantly in bitterly cold air. No hat. One baby grow for weeks. She can’t have been remotely clean, we all know what newborn poops are like. She received no love, warmth or care. Listened to the podcast and in the same breath as saying she wanted a cremation for her daughter (what a load of fucking bullshit) she says it was “to hide the evidence”. What a loving motherly description, what a lovely motherly idea to go and get petrol to burn the tiny corpse of your own little baby that had never felt the warmth of home! I really hope they rot.