From lady to tramp: Constance Marten was worth £2.4m and was once named a Tatler ‘Babe of the Month’. But she ended up scavenging from bins after estrangement from her family

From the dock of the Old Bailey, Constance Marten repeatedly insisted that she and Mark Gordon were good parents.

‘There is literally nothing I would not do for my children,’ she said, adding: ‘Mark and I love our kids more than anything in the world.’

The fact that their first four children had all been taken into care and the fifth apparently died in a freezing tent was everyone’s fault but their own, she insisted.

Marten complained that her wealthy family didn’t like Gordon, and claimed they used their wealth and influence to get social services to intervene and that the state had ‘stolen’ her children.

But the official record of what actually happened paints a very different picture of Marten and Gordon’s parenting skills.

Because, following a legal application by this newspaper, the full story of why their children were taken into care can today be told for the first time after a judge in the Family Court ruled that key documents could be made public.

Jurors were not given access to the files because the manslaughter case centred on their fifth child, Victoria.

But laid out in black and white over more than 100 pages, they show how the authorities bent over backwards to accommodate a couple who failed to attend hearings, presented false information and accused witnesses of lying.

Marten and Gordon’s behaviour was also repeatedly called into question, with concerns raised that should the children be left in the couple’s care they would be exposed to domestic violence and even risk being injured themselves.

Following a hearing last year, Judge Madeleine Reardon ruled there was a strong public interest in allowing the Family Court’s decision-making to be understood.

She added that, regardless of the outcome of the criminal trial, the proceedings provided crucial background to the couple’s decision to live ‘off-grid’ to evade social services.

She also made it clear that the information about the proceedings that had emerged during the trial was ‘partial and incomplete’. Indeed, Judge Reardon said that ‘various accounts’ given by Marten of what happened were inaccurate ‘in a number of respects’.

These included claiming she had a minor ‘fall’ from a window when three months pregnant, emerging without even a bruise.

‘In fact, the [undisputed] evidence before the Family Court was that in this incident Ms Marten suffered very serious injuries, including a shattered spleen,’ the judge noted.

‘The court’s finding was that Mr Gordon had caused these injuries.’

Marten also claimed her family had colluded with social services to have her children removed, and ‘had alleged that she was bearing children to sell on the black market and was a drug addict’.

Judge Reardon wrote: ‘Allegations of this nature played no part in the Family Court proceedings.’

Equally informative is the picture that emerges from the hearings of the couple’s relationship – one that dominated and informed absolutely everything they did.

‘They see external agencies and third parties as posing a challenge to their relationship, and view all offers of support as hostile,’ observed the judge in one of the released Family Court judgments.

‘The strong impression given by the parents is that of two people who are fiercely united in an unrelenting struggle against a non-existent opponent.’

That relationship had begun with a chance meeting in a shop in London. By 2016 Marten and Gordon were a couple – taking part in a non-legally binding ‘marriage’ ceremony in Peru, then cutting off contact with Marten’s family.

Soon after she was pregnant with their first child.

Incredibly, according to details in the first of a series of Family Court judgments, when she became pregnant she was completely unaware of Gordon’s criminal past – namely that he had served 20 years in a US jail having been convicted of rape at 14. In June 2017, after returning to the UK from their travels in South America, Marten attended a maternity hospital in London. She had not sought any antenatal care before this point and told medics she was living in a campervan.

With no further contact from the couple and concern about missed follow-ups, social services in London issued a national hospital alert three months later. The NHS issues these when a pregnant woman is thought to require protection or support.

When Marten resurfaced in November she was in Wales. She was also in labour, using a fake Irish accent and claiming to be a traveller called Isabella O’Brien, on the run from her family who disapproved because the baby was being born out of wedlock.

She lied that Gordon, who was present, was just a friend. Marten managed to stay in character throughout the birth, but her deception was rumbled when a social worker recalled the nationwide alert and police were called, confirming Marten’s identity.

The new mum insisted she could care for her baby and would seek council housing and benefits.

But further concerns were raised when social workers found that the couple were living in a mouldy tent on wasteland by a dual carriageway near a Tesco. Their only preparation for the birth had been to buy five baby-grows. Marten dismissed social workers’ misgivings, saying: ‘Different people have different ways of living’.

She maintained that she was fully estranged from her family, with no financial support. However, it emerged that only a year earlier – in late 2016 – the family trust had been in the process of buying a house for her in London. Just before contracts were due to be exchanged, Marten instructed the trustees to pull out, telling them: ‘Due to a recent development in my career and progression, I can no longer live in London.’

Giving evidence, she claimed her change of heart was only due to her family’s continuing ‘surveillance’.

Her faith in alternative lifestyles proved futile, and an interim care order was made in relation to the baby who, together with Marten, was placed with foster carers.

Here, doubts continued to be expressed about her parenting. The carers told social workers they were concerned that Marten had left the baby alone in her flat on one occasion and would let the baby fall asleep on top of her, risking suffocation. This was a pertinent fact, the criminal trial would hear, given how Marten would claim her fifth child died.

The carers were also said to be ‘fearful’ of Marten because of allegations and complaints she made against them as a ‘tactic’ to end her supervision.

That first birth also saw Gordon jailed for assaulting a female police officer.

Police sources told the Mail that officers who attended the hospital spoke to Gordon, who gave them a fake name.

But the date of birth he provided – April 31 – was his undoing. April only has 30 days. When this was pointed out, a scuffle ensued and he assaulted two female officers in what was described as ‘an extremely unpleasant incident’.

Gordon had to be subdued with an incapacitating spray before being put in leg restraints.

He was jailed for 40 weeks for the assault and for breaching reporting requirements linked to being a registered sex offender. On his release he failed to attend ten out of 12 parenting assessments.

A forensic psychologist who spoke to him found him ‘extremely difficult to engage with’ and noted: ‘It must be borne in mind that stress could well trigger incidents of violence in the future. Father has the capacity to act in a violent manner.’

Interactions between the couple and social services culminated in a judgment dated July 2018, when District Judge Marjory Taylor ruled that a six-month supervision order should be imposed so social services could monitor them when they moved back to London from Wales.

But the Family Court had to intervene again in February 2021 when a local authority in the capital sought a ‘fact-finding’ ruling from the court, alleging that the parents had failed to provide for their children’s medical needs, that there had been domestic abuse in their relationship and that they had ‘evaded social services’ efforts to investigate and to safeguard the children’.

By then Marten and Gordon had three children, all of whom had already been placed in foster care. As with the first set of proceedings, hearings were frequently delayed by the couple. On one occasion Gordon claimed he needed to have a tooth extracted, forcing an adjournment.

‘It became clear over time… that the parents were deliberately evading putting themselves in a position where they would be required to challenge the local authority’s evidence, and that they were also desperately anxious to avoid giving evidence themselves,’ the judge wrote.

Of the background to the case, she noted that Marten had made ‘serious allegations’ of childhood abuse against both her parents.

But Judge Reardon said Marten’s parents disputed the accusations, saying their daughter had been ‘brainwashed’ into making them. She also heard how police classified Gordon as ‘high risk’ because he repeatedly refused to complete an annual risk assessment for convicted sex offenders. The court heard that their second child had been born at home in London in spring 2019 without the authorities’ knowledge.

Then, in November 2019, when 14 weeks pregnant with her third, Marten ‘fell’ out of the window of the couple’s rented flat. Her two children were present at the time.

In the criminal case, the jury heard her play down the incident in an interview with police following her arrest.

‘I had an accident and the Family Court were blaming Mark for it, absolutely no evidence, so that’s why my children were taken,’ she told the Old Bailey. ‘I had a fall from a window. There were no bruises on me, no signs of domestic violence, so how they came to that conclusion [was] quite phenomenal, to be honest. I was furious by it, because our children suffered massively.’ But the Family Court was told Marten was taken to hospital with a shattered spleen, damage to her kidney and internal bleeding and needed a blood transfusion. ‘It is fortunate that she made a full recovery,’ the judge observed.

She recorded how a neighbour called an ambulance at 3.35am, having heard screaming, and then saw a woman fall 18ft from the first-floor of a terraced house, hitting a car.

When the ambulance arrived, Marten was back inside the house shouting: ‘Help me!’ At no stage had Gordon rung for help.

Concerned by his behaviour, paramedics waited for police to arrive before entering the property.

The judgment records: ‘The father [Gordon] told PC Hennessy that both had fallen out of the window trying to fix an aerial. PC Hennessy said that he was suspicious of the circumstances, and put it to the father directly that he had pushed the mother.’

When Gordon was asked in hospital what had happened, he said: ‘I’m still in shock. Can you come back to me with more information, and we can talk then?’

However, from then on he refused to elaborate further.

Marten also claimed that it had been an accident, adding that Gordon had fallen, too, but ‘luckily he landed on his feet’.

‘Her response to questioning was to make increasingly serious allegations against the local authority, of evidence-tampering and perjury, which then extended to include similar allegations against the police and medical professions,’ the judge noted.

She also highlighted a pattern in the case whereby the couple gave ‘false information in a plausible and confident manner which can easily mislead professionals’.

She concluded: ‘I find on the balance of probabilities that the father caused the mother to fall out of the window. I am not able to find whether he pushed her or whether she fell during a struggle.

‘The former may be more likely because the bottom of the window is a few feet up from the floor, and it would have required some impetus to get the mother’s body up and over the sill.’

Gordon’s actions had, the judge said, ‘put her [Marten’s] life and the life of their unborn child at serious risk’.

Exposing children to domestic violence such as this, she went on, could cause them serious harm.

After Marten’s fall, the couple then deliberately evaded a safeguarding investigation by the local authority.

Marten fled to Ireland with the two children to avoid answering questions, claiming to have taken a holiday at a ‘wellness retreat for people that are unwell’.

The day after the fall, a social worker visited the family home, but Gordon refused to let him in. The social worker noticed a strong smell of cannabis – asked about this subsequently, Marten claimed it was ‘herbal sage’. She separately refused to submit a hair sample to be tested for cannabis use, something the judge said had no relevance to the proceedings.

Her father, Napier Marten, launched wardship proceedings, offering to care for his grandchildren, leading to a High Court order for her to return to the UK.

Marten took her children to a police station in Ireland but refused to return for weeks while the matter was dragged out in the Irish courts. When she did finally come back the children were placed in foster care, never again to be returned to their parents.

Ahead of their third child being born in London in May 2020 a plan was put in place for Marten and the baby to go straight to a residential assessment unit.

But after the birth the couple refused to do this and a court order was made to place this child into foster care, too.

Having made her findings of fact, Judge Reardon said the threshold for state intervention with the three children had been crossed, with a decision to be made on their long-term future, including the possibility of adoption.

This led to a third judgment being handed down by Judge Reardon in January 2022, by which time Gordon and Marten had had a fourth child.

Incredibly, it emerged that Marten had been pregnant during proceedings the year before, concealing it from the local authority and the court.

The day after the birth she discharged herself from hospital in London, leaving the baby in the care of nurses. When she tried to return to the ward the next day she was refused entry as she would not take a Covid test. This child was also fostered.

The court heard that while all four children were in care, their parents were allowed to have contact sessions with them during 2021. But their attendance became ‘sporadic’ and in October 2021 they ceased attending altogether.

The pair showed a ‘baffling lack of commitment’ to their children, missing 19 contact sessions, the judge said.

‘My mummy and daddy cancelled again,’ their children told staff. One had a nightmare that monsters had taken their parents away, while another began bed-wetting and developed a stammer.

The hearings were once again beset by delays and problems. On the first day of the one in January 2022, the pair claimed to have Covid – sending in photos of positive lateral flow tests and only attending remotely.

The documents also reveal that Marten’s mother, Virginie de Selliers, had offered to be a potential carer for the two older children, saying that she ‘felt desperately sad for her daughter and the children’.

But having been given access to all the files, she then withdrew her offer. Her lawyer told the court of her reasoning: ‘She saw the relationship between the parents as an enmeshed and abusive one, and was concerned that if any of the children were placed with her she would not be able safely to care for them.’

Marten’s next move was to claim she intended to separate from Gordon as soon as possible – telling the court she wanted to be considered as the children’s sole carer. But the judge said she did not believe this would happen.

Gordon, meanwhile, was his usual silent self. He gave no evidence during the hearings, not even a witness statement, leaving it to Marten to argue that the children could be safely cared for by them.

She claimed she had not taken part in expert assessments ahead of the hearing because ‘she had been sucked into internet advice groups run by other parents in which it was suggested that the best way to succeed in proceedings of this nature is to withdraw co-operation and challenge every step taken by the authority or court’.

Judge Reardon dismissed this as ‘wholly implausible’.

Marten also claimed that she had only missed contact meetings with her children because there was no CCTV at the contact centres and she was concerned her interactions with them would be misrepresented.

Again, Judge Reardon dismissed the explanation, describing it as ‘absurd’. She also noted that when Marten was told in court about her children’s ‘heartbreaking’ reaction to her no-shows, she showed little response.

The judge said that when one child’s reaction was put to Marten, ‘the mother said simply, and without emotion, that she had had to think about the bigger picture’. Judge Reardon added: ‘I was entirely unclear as to what she thought the bigger picture was.

‘I have to conclude there is something in the parents’ lives that is powerful enough to prevent them choosing time with their children, and even perhaps to dampen the emotional impact of recognising the harm that the children have suffered as a result. I have no idea what it is.

‘It is a tragedy for the children that the parents’ capacity to meet their needs, which in a number of respects is excellent, is so deeply compromised by the conduct which causes them harm.

‘Perhaps most hurtful, from the children’s point of view, is their parents’ baffling lack of commitment to them over the course of these lengthy proceedings and their inability, or unwillingness, to do what needed to be done in order to reclaim them. It is a picture that I, as a reasonably experienced Family Court judge, find very difficult to comprehend. I have no doubt in future years all four children will struggle to come to terms with their history and are likely to experience powerful feelings of anger, loss and hurt.’

The hearing concluded with an order that all four children be put up for adoption.

Other options had been to leave them in their parents’ care or in foster care where the couple would have contact with them. But outlining the risk of continued parental contact, Judge Reardon said: ‘It is much more likely than not that in the foreseeable future the children will be exposed to serious physical violence between their parents.

‘It is quite possible they will be injured themselves, and virtually certain that they will suffer long-term psychological harm and impairment in all areas of their development.’

As we now know, that was not the end of Marten and Gordon’s parenthood. Within weeks of the adoption hearing Marten was pregnant – and determined to evade social services by going on the run.

According to Marten, baby number five – Victoria – was born in a rented cottage on Christmas Eve 2022.

The first authorities knew of it was when they found a placenta in the back of the couple’s abandoned car, along with four used babies’ dummies packed carefully in a Tupperware box – poignant mementos of the four previous children placed in care.

Within days, the matter was once again back before Judge Reardon, who imposed an interim care order on their baby allowing it to be taken into foster care once found.

Tragically for baby Victoria, that was never to happen.