Aristocrat Constance Marten wept in court as she denied causing the death of her newborn baby when on the run with her partner, and told the Old Bailey: “I did nothing but show her love”.
The 36-year-old is accused alongside Mark Gordon, 49, of causing the death of baby Victoria after the couple disappeared in late December 2022.
Beginning her evidence on Thursday, Marten told jurors “I feel guilty” over Victoria’s death and described the moment she found her daughter lifeless in her arms.
But she insisted she had “absolutely not” harmed her baby daughter or been cruel to her, saying she “did nothing but show her love”.
When asked about her death, Marten said: “I don’t think it’s ever something I will move on from.
“I feel guilty because she was in my arms. I feel like it’s not an easy thing to live with.”
She added: “I think initially it was disbelief, shock, intense grief.”
Marten, wearing a white blouse and black trousers, was later asked about the moment she discovered her baby daughter had died.
“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.”
Marten became emotional midway through swearing her oath at the start of her evidence, and asked for five minutes to go to the toilet.
After returning to court, and eight minutes into her evidence, she asked for another break, saying she “gets very nervous”.
But Judge Mark Lucraft KC, the Recorder of London, encouraged her to continue, with the promise of regular breaks.
She and Gordon are accused of baby Victoria’s manslaughter by gross negligence during their time “off grid” between December 2022 and February last year, when they feared she would be taken from them into care.
Their four other children had previously been taken from them by social services, and put into foster care.
It is alleged they subjected newborn Victoria to freezing cold temperatures while camping on the South Downs, and are accused of denying her access to proper food, warmth, and clothing.
But Marten insisted she was afforded the best care possible, and asked if she had been “cruel” to the baby or harmed her, she replied: “Absolutely not” and added: “I did nothing but show her love.”
She said Victoria died on January 9, 2023, just days into her short life, and more than a month before her body was found in a disused shed near Brighton, in a Lidl supermarket bag-for-life under a pile of rubbish.
Marten denied she exposed the baby to the cold, and asked if she allowed her to get too hot she replied: “Not that I’m aware of, no.”
Her barrister, Francis FitzGibbon KC, asked: “As 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.”
Describing the aftermath of Victoria’s death, Marten told the court she and Gordon considered cremating the body.
“I had a thousand different thoughts going on in my head. I immediately panicked”, she said.
“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.”
The trial has heard evidence of Marten and Gordon’s travels around the country as they tried to evade authorities.
She said she gave birth on Christmas Eve 2022, in the bedroom of a hired cottage in Park View, Northumberland.
“I wanted to keep Victoria with us so I did not want to tell anyone about thebirth”, she said.
“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 joyfulbut at the same time anxious.”
Marten said they had hatched a plan to leave the country and take Victoria to a new life abroad.
“We wanted Victoria with me for the first six months of her life”, she said. “I don’t think it’s fair for any child to be removed from their parents.”
She said the plan was to “potentially give her to a carer, to take care of her without the local authority knowing”, and for that person to bring Victoria to their new life outside the UK.
Asked about the purpose of their travels in December 2022 and January last year, Marten said: “We moved jurisdictions between one and three days, so no local authority could have jurisdiction over an unborn baby and so that my family couldn’t coincide with social services or the police.”
The court heard Marten, who hails from a wealthy aristocratic family, studied Arabic, Middle Eastern history, and Islamic Studies at Leeds University, and has worked as a photographer for news organisation Al Jazeera, as a nanny, and in cafes.
She told the court that she had received a fine while at university for stealing a t-shirt, describing it as a “prank”.
She said she inherited money after the death of her grandmother, and told jurors she is estranged from her family due to “issues”.
“I stopped speaking to one of my family members about two years before I met Mr Gordon”, she said. “When I met him, I made a definite decision that was it for me. I didn’t want anything to do with them.”
She accessed her money while they were on the run, and jurors have been told that Marten and Gordon fled from a car fire on the M61, leaving behind many of their possessions including baby clothes.
Marten described them as being “in a state of panic” as their case hit the news, and while she was not watching TV or reading newspapers she said she realised people knew who they were.
“I was hyper vigilant”, she said. “I thought the police would come and take Victoria away, and it made me feel extremely stressed.
The court has heard how they tried to blend in in East Ham, east London, but they “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 wasconcerned 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 says the baby died before they spent a long period of time camping.
Earlier in her evidence, Marten said she met Gordon when she was working in a shop and was asked by a colleague to “watch” him over suspect behaviour, but they ended up going for coffee.
“We laughed about it,” she said. “We were good friends at the start.”
She said they went travelling to Peru, where they unofficially got married in 2016.
“Like every relationship, we have ups and downs but we have been together for nine years,” she said. “There is a lot of goodness there, as well as, you know,” she added, before her voice trailed off.
Gordon opted earlier this week to not give evidence at the trial.
It is said the couple went on the run after their four other children had been taken into care, fearing the same would happen to Victoria.
The defendants, who previously lived in east London but are now 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 trial continues.
