Aristocrat Constance Marten has told jurors she moved from place to place with her newborn girl to prevent the baby from being taken into care, insisting she and her partner did “everything we could to protect her”.
Marten, 37, and Mark Gordon, 50, are charged with the manslaughter of their daughter Victoria, who died after they went off-grid in early 2023.
The Old Bailey was told the couple were avoiding their fifth child being removed from them amid a high-profile police hunt for the missing baby, with Marten claiming her other children were “stolen by the state”.
It is alleged Victoria was inadequately clothed in a babygrow and that Marten had got wet as she carried the baby underneath her coat.
The prosecution alleges Victoria died from hypothermia or was smothered while co-sleeping in the “flimsy” tent on the South Downs, despite past warnings.
The child’s body was discovered with rubbish inside a shopping bag in a disused shed near Brighton after the defendants were arrested on February 27 2023.
There had been a delay to Marten starting her evidence after she complained of suffering from a headache and toothache on Tuesday, but she began her evidence-in-chief on Thursday morning.
Sitting in the witness box wearing a blue blouse and navy blazer, Marten told the court that she “absolutely” loved Victoria.
Asked if she did anything to cause her harm, the defendant said: “Absolutely not, we did everything we could to protect her.”
Questioned on how she felt about her death now, Marten told jurors: “I don’t think this process has really allowed me to grieve properly.
“I still feel angry, upset, still in shock.”
She said Victoria was born on Christmas Eve 2022 and died January 9 the next year.
The court heard how Marten and Gordon “stayed all around the country” in various hotels and properties in the months leading up to Victoria’s birth.
Marten explained they moved between places “because I didn’t want one single authority to have jurisdiction over my daughter, so if we kept moving, they couldn’t take her”.
“I knew that my family would be looking and they would have people that they were paying to follow us,” she added.
Jurors heard the defendants checked into a cottage in Northumberland between December 20 and 26, where she gave birth.
Marten said she had an “easy” pregnancy and delivery with no complications, adding that she would have taken the baby to hospital “straight away” had there been any issues.
Detailing their plan after checking out of the cottage on Boxing Day, Marten said: “Continue to move jurisdictions every three or four days, rent a place in cash and live there as long as I can with Victoria.”
Asked about the concerns they had about moving around with a newborn, she told the court: “Obviously it would have been nicer to have been somewhere stable and been able to properly relax and enjoy ourselves with her as a family but we weren’t in that position so we had to do what we had to do really.
“Because I knew that the local authorities were after her and I knew that there were private investigators investigating us.”
She described the baby as “good” during that time – feeding regularly and spending a lot of time asleep.
Marten told how she kept Victoria in a sling under her coat when interacting with strangers because she did not want anyone to know she had had a baby.
On January 5, a car the defendants had been travelling in caught fire and they left many of their possessions in the vehicle before fleeing from Bolton to Liverpool, the court heard.
Marten described Victoria, and keeping her with them, as “our number one priority”.
“Obviously I wanted to keep Victoria with us,” she later added. “Children, especially babies… are very sensitive to love, warmth, environment, in terms of motherly love, and I don’t think it’s fair on a young baby not to experience that.
“I think she needed to be with her parents as long as possible.
“For her sake predominantly, but obviously as a mother, it’s heart-wrenching when you lose your children.”
Jurors heard Marten comes from a wealthy family with whom she “never really had a strong connection” and eventually became estranged from.
She said she was financially privileged growing up, but “emotionally not at all”.
“Obviously I don’t want to seem ungrateful for having comfort and nice things and access to finances,” she said. “It’s great but without familial love… there are more important things.”
The court heard Marten and Gordon met around 10 years ago and became good friends before going travelling in Peru for around six months and getting married there.
She described the marriage as a “blessing” ceremony and not one legally recognised in the UK.
“I love him very much,” she said. “He is very dear to me.”
But he was not welcomed by her family, she added.
Gordon elected not to give evidence in the trial.
The pair, of no fixed address, have denied the gross negligence manslaughter of their daughter and causing or allowing her death between January 4 and February 27 2023.
Jurors have been told the defendants were convicted at an earlier trial of concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice.
The trial continues.
Everything but take the baby to a hospital.