Aristocrat and partner told off for ‘disrupting’ sentencing over baby death

Aristocrat Constance Marten and her convicted rapist partner were warned against disruptions in the dock as they were being sentenced over the death of their newborn baby.

Marten, 38, and Mark Gordon, 51, were found guilty of manslaughter, child cruelty, concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice following two trials spanning six months each.

On Monday, Judge Mark Lucraft KC repeatedly warned the pair about “disruption” in the dock as lawyers mitigated for the pair ahead of their Old Bailey sentencing.

The couple were seen talking to each other, gesturing and passing notes as they sat flanked by dock officers.

Judge Lucraft told them that their behaviour showed a “complete lack of respect” to the court.

When Marten complained that she was “entitled to a pen”, the judge said he was trying to listen to her barrister’s submissions and she was being “very distracting”.

Mitigating for Marten, Tom Godfrey expressed her “sadness and remorse” for what happened, saying her grief was “incalculable”.

He argued that any “negligent conduct” was confined to the tent where baby Victoria died and there was “insufficient evidence” the child had suffered in the days before and been ignored.

He read a string of character witnesses, including from Marten’s mother Virginie de Selliers who sat in the well of the court.

In her statement, Mrs de Selliers said she was “horrified” at how her daughter had been characterised during her trials, saying it did not reflect “the daughter I remember”.

She stated: “What I do know is she showed sheer determination when fighting for her children and her daughter Victoria.

“It is my sincere hope that when considering her future, her courage and loyalty and deep sense of fairness are not overlooked.”

Mitigating for Gordon, Philippa McAtasney KC said he suffered “a great deal of upset and anxiety” when Victoria’s older siblings were taken into care before she was born.

She told the court: “He says that the children being taken away affected everything, affected their whole lives, and they were suffering a trauma, and he accepts that poor decisions were made which he very much regrets.

“He said he will live with this for the remainder of his life.”

It was argued on behalf of both defendants that the judge should reject the prosecution case that baby Victoria died of hypothermia and accept she was accidentally smothered, as they claimed.

Previously, the court had heard how the defendants exposed Victoria to dangerous conditions when they went into hiding to avoid her being taken into care, as four other siblings had been before.

Police launched a nationwide hunt after their car burst into flames on a motorway near Bolton, Greater Manchester, on January 5 2023.

The defendants travelled across England and went off-grid, sleeping in a tent on the South Downs where baby Victoria died days later.

After seven weeks on the run, the defendants were arrested in Brighton.

After a desperate search, police found their baby dead amid rubbish inside a Lidl bag in a disused shed nearby.

Victoria’s remains were too badly decomposed to establish the cause of death.

The prosecution said she had died from hypothermia in the cold and damp conditions inside the flimsy tent or was smothered despite Marten being warned by social workers about the dangers.

The defendants claimed their daughter’s death was a tragic accident after Marten fell asleep on her.

Jurors in the first trial in 2024 were not told about Gordon’s violent past, which was only partly revealed in their second trial.

In 1989, Gordon, then aged 14, held a woman against her will in Florida for more than four hours and raped her while armed with a knife and hedge clippers.

Within a month, he entered another property and carried out another offence involving aggravated battery.

Gordon, who moved with his mother from Birmingham to the US at the age of 12, was sentenced to 40 years in jail and was released after 22 years.

In 2017, Gordon was convicted of assaulting two female police officers at a maternity unit in Wales where Marten gave birth to their first child under a fake identity.

Jurors were not told that Gordon was also suspected of a incident of domestic violence in 2019 which left Marten with a shattered spleen.

Gordon had refused to allow paramedics into their London flat to treat her after she fell out of a window when she was 14 weeks pregnant, it emerged during legal argument.

She spent eight days in hospital then put her life and that of her unborn child at risk by attempting to discharge herself, with Gordon’s support, it was alleged.

It was after that incident that the family court decided the couple’s other children should be taken into care.

When Marten became pregnant for a fifth time, she kept it secret, giving birth in a hired holiday cottage on Christmas Eve 2022.

The defendants’ attempts to keep Victoria under wraps prompted the major police alert after a placenta was found inside their abandoned car near Bolton on January 5 2023.

While on the run, Victoria was only briefly glimpsed on CCTV footage in London wearing the same teddy bear motif babygrow later recovered with her body inside the Lidl bag.