Aristocrat ‘victim of class prejudice’, says her barrister

AN ARISTOCRAT accused of killing her baby is no ‘monster’ – just a grieving mother and the victim of ‘nasty class prejudice’, her lawyer said yesterday. Constance Marten has been wrongly portrayed as an ‘arrogant’ aristocrat with an ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ attitude in smears spread by the prosecution, Francis FitzGibbon KC told the Old Bailey.

In his closing speech, Mr FitzGibbon said the 36-year-old had been subjected to ‘intense criticism of her life choices’ after she went on the run with her partner Mark Gordon, 49, to prevent their newborn baby Victoria being taken into care.

But he insisted the mother had committed no crime when she accidentally fell asleep on top of the baby, who died as they were camping on the South Downs in freezing conditions.

‘This case has been prosecuted as if Constance Marten was a monster,’ Mr FitzGibbon said.

He told jurors that Marten was haunted by the ‘ghost of that love’ for her daughter and her four other children who had already been taken into care. Marten gave birth in secret in December 2022, hoping to hide her baby from the authorities, but her car exploded on a motorway near Bolton on January 5 last year. A police hunt was sparked when the child’s placenta was found in the wreckage.

A fellow driver tried to help the couple at the roadside, but Marten dismissed him as a workman in what prosecutor Tom Little KC said was ‘almost an Upstairs, Downstairs mentality’ referring to the hit 1970s TV show about a rich family and their servants.

Mr FitzGibbon said this was an example of ‘nasty class prejudice’ and ‘just another smear’ in an ‘aggressive, bullish’ prosecution.

He told jurors that when Victoria died, her parents were ‘blundering about not knowing what they were doing’.

‘She was scared of being found and falsely accused of killing this baby,’ he said. ‘You can see from what they were doing after the death, they were semi-deranged with grief and anxiety.

‘They were scavenging for food and looking almost feral. That behaviour after the death is entirely consistent with being absolutely messed up in the heads.’

Victoria was found dead in a Lidl bag-for-life two days after the pair were arrested near Brighton on February 27.

A post-mortem examination was unable to establish how she died due to the state of decomposition, but Mr FitzGibbon said there was no evidence to say it was hypothermia.

The defendants 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.

‘Aggressive prosecution’