“I wanted a normal life”
: an aristocrat tried for the death of her baby during a run that had fascinated the British, recounted her descent into hell on Thursday in London, denying any act of cruelty towards her daughter.
Long brown hair, Constance Marten, who apologizes for her nervousness, spoke to the surprise of the Old Bailey criminal court, which expected to end without her testimony this trial for negligent homicide which began on January 25 .
Aged 36, this Briton is the heiress of a family historically close to the royal family.
In January 2023, the escape of this well-born young woman and her companion Mark Gordon, a 49-year-old man who served a 20-year prison sentence for rape in the United States, made the headlines in the British media.
For almost two months, the couple, who lived on the fringes of society and had already had their four other children taken away, fled the police and social services to try to keep little Victoria.
They were arrested on February 27, 2023 in Brighton, southern England, after weeks of sleeping in hotels, then in tents, and spending hundreds of pounds traveling by taxi across the country.
Born outside of any medical facility, their daughter, a few weeks old, was found dead on March 1 in a supermarket bag covered in trash inside an abandoned shed.
“Mark and I love our children more than anything in the world
,” said Constance Marten in a trembling voice, assuring that their little daughter had not been the victim of acts of cruelty, or exposed to the cold during their flight.
“I only gave him love
,” she assures.
“I feel guilty because she was in my arms
,” she nevertheless confided.
The young mother had fallen asleep with Victoria in her arms, sheltered by her jacket, and said she found her dead when she woke up,
“an immense shock and sorrow”.
Unexplained breakups
In court, the story of Constance Marten, who spent her youth in posh schools and traveled all over the world, is made up of ellipses and unexplained ruptures.
“I was extremely lucky
,” says the young heiress, who recounts, with downcast eyes, that the revelation of a
“traumatic event”
that occurred during her childhood and caused by a member of her family forced her to take fleeing and breaking up with those close to him in the early 2010s.
In 2014, she met Mark Gordon, and began a nine-year relationship of
“ups and downs”
, she simply comments.
Constance Marten, who says she was then pursued by private detectives sent by her family, became pregnant with her first child in 2017. The couple, at that time, lived in a tent in Wales, and her relatives “cut
her food”
a few days before the birth.
After the birth, the couple isolated themselves, became paranoid, and Constance Marten stayed away from doctors and social services, whom she also held responsible for her descent into hell.
By asking them for help
“I made a deal with the devil, and it was probably the worst decision of my life
,” she says.
The couple has four children before Victoria, who will be taken from them one after the other.
On the evening of Christmas Eve 2022, in an apartment she rented in Northumberland in the north of England, Constance Marten gave birth to Victoria without medical assistance.
The couple fled so that she would not be taken from them,
“to protect her
,” she said.
“I wanted a normal life, but I had great difficulties with my family... It was not a choice
,” she assures.
The couple is on trial for, among other things, murder by negligence, concealing the birth of a child and cruelty to a child.
They pleaded not guilty.
According to a pathologist heard by the court this week, Victoria could have lost her life due to the cold or sudden infant death syndrome, but the precise cause of her death cannot be established.