Constance Marten tells court her four previous children were 'stolen' (2024)

Constance Martentodaytold the Old Bailey that her previous four children had been ‘stolen’ by social workers at the behest of her family, who enjoyed the ‘backing of the state’ because they had a ‘lot of money, a lot of clout and connections’.

It came after she claimed that her family accused her of having children to sell on the black market - as she told jurors that she and her lover planned to smuggle their baby daughter abroad.

The aristocrat, 36, and her 49-year-old lover Mark Gordon are accused of killing their fifth child Victoria by taking her on the run in January last year to prevent her being taken away by social services.

Victoria was later found dead in a Lidlbag for life and prosecutors claim she died from exposure after weeks in bitterly cold conditions. Marten claims the baby died asleep in her arms after one night of camping.

The couple met in 2014 and had four children in quick succession who were all eventually taken into care after Marten gave birth to their first child using an Irish accent pretending to be a traveller, jurors have heard.

The aristocrat claims this was because her family were opposed to her relationship and paying private investigators to follow her.

Prosecutor Joel Smith asked Marten: 'Do you remember what you were doing when you found out you were pregnant with Victoria?'

She replied: 'I'm not sure what the relevance of that question is.'

Marten was told to answer the question.

'I would have been on the toilet,' said Marten.

Mr Smith asked: 'Do you remember which house you were in, what you were up to?'

Marten replied: 'I was in Greenwich. I was in a house in Greenwich.'

Marten went on to say that her children were taken away from her 'illegally...'

She said: 'It is abhorrent. My children were stolen from me by the state, there is no other way to say it.'

She said that she wanted to go abroad illegally with Victoria so that the baby could spend the first three months of her life with her mother.

'Our plan was to go abroad to get Victoria away from the services and my family,' she explained.

'Unfortunately there were preventatives to me going abroad.'

Marten claimed that a family member had got a court order which banned her from leaving the country.

'They had the full backing of the state to do that,' she told jurors.

'They said that I was bearing children to sell on the black market, that I was a drug addict. Those accusations are wholly unfounded.'

Giving evidence today, Martentold the jury that after finding out she was pregnant with her fifth child, the plan was to go abroad.

'Get away from this country and the services and my family but unfortunately there were preventatives from going abroad,' she said.

She believed there was a travel ban in place against her after a 'private' High Court case in 2019, the court heard.

Asked how they were going to get abroad, Marten said: 'We were going to find some people to smuggle us abroad illegally.'

She told jurors that there were 'plenty of people' she could have found who would have been willing to help get Victoria abroad, naming advertising and community website Gumtree as one of the places to look.

Asked where she was going to go, she initially told the court she 'would rather keep that private' but then said 'anywhere in Europe away from here'.

Marten told jurors that 'plan B' was to stay in the UK and 'lay low'.

Asked to elaborate on the plan to remain in the UK, Marten said: 'I probably would not have stayed over here.

'I wanted to keep her at least until she was three months old and then give her to a carer who could then try and get her abroad.'

She told the court she would have paid the person to get Victoria out of the UK.

'It would have been a carer, a nanny or something,' she added. 'If there is a will there is a way, you can always find someone to help.'

She insisted she would have 'spent time with them' before entrusting them with her child.

Marten said the plan was to find someone prepared to register Victoria under their own name.

She told the court earlier that she would not have been able to register her daughter's birth without alerting the authorities and that she planned to use private medical care on Harley Street if her daughter ever needed medical attention instead of registering her with the NHS.

Challenged on how getting someone else to register the baby's birth may have been difficult, Marten said: 'I am sure these things are doable. I will do anything to save my children.'

Marten also told the court she believed people were following them and tampering with their cars, saying that she found 'GPS trackers' under the vehicles and 'every single one of our cars has just stopped in the middle of the motorway'.

The couple abandoned their car after it burst into flames near Bolton, Greater Manchester, on January 5 last year and were finally arrested in Brighton a few weeks later on February 27.

The couple had refused to answer officers' urgent questions about where their baby was and whether she was alive or dead.

Her remains were found by police in a Lidl bag inside a shed on a nearby allotment on March 1 2023.

Last week, Marten described how Victoria was born at a rental cottage on Christmas Eve 2022 and died last January 9.

On how Victoria died, she said: '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.'

She told jurors her children meant the world to her and she had done nothing to Victoria 'but show her love'.

The defendants, 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.