Victoria Marten- Protecting all vulnerable babies better
The national review, Protecting all vulnerable babies better published this month reflects on the tragic circumstances of baby Victoria Marten’s life, which led to her untimely death.
The review focusses on the need to strengthen preventative safeguarding practice in the protection of babies and infants known to be vulnerable, particularly where siblings have been removed from their family.
The events which led to the death of baby Victoria are complex, involving a background of domestic abuse, siblings permanently removed through care proceedings, non-engagement with multi-agency professionals and evading social care services.
Timeline of key events:
- 2016:
- Constance Marten, an aristocrat with family links to the royal family, and Mark Gordon, who served 20 years in the USA following a conviction of rape begin their relationship.
- 2017–2022:
- During this period, the couple have four children together. Due to concerns regarding domestic violence, which included a serious incident resulting in Marten suffering a ruptured spleen, and their ‘off-grid’ lifestyle, all four children are taken into Local Authority care and eventually placed for adoption.
- 2022:
- In the latter part of 2022, Marten becomes pregnant with her fifth child, Victoria. The couple do not engage with multi-agency services e.g. midwifery services, and decide to conceal the pregnancy with the aim of avoiding contact social care scrutiny and prevent the baby being removed into care.
- January 5, 2023:
- Whilst living an ‘off-grid’ transient lifestyle, the couple's car breaks down and catches fire on the M61 near Bolton. Police discover a human placenta in the wreckage, which sparks a national high-risk missing persons search.
- January – February 2023:
- During this time, the couple use taxis to travel within the UK, paying in cash to evade detection. They eventually settle in a tent on the South Downs in East Sussex during sub-zero temperatures.
- February 27, 2023:
- Police receive information from a member of the public, and Marten and Gordon are arrested in Brighton. The couple refuse to tell police of the location of their baby.
- March 1, 2023:
- In a search involving 200 police officers, the remains of baby Victoria are discovered. Her body is found in a Lidl shopping bag in a disused allotment shed in Brighton.
- January – June 2024:
- The first criminal trial takes place at the Old Bailey. The jury finds them guilty of concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty, and perverting the course of justice. The jury is unable to reach a verdict on the most serious charges: gross negligence manslaughter and causing or allowing the death of a child.
- March – July 2025:
- A retrial is held for the manslaughter charges. The prosecution argues that the baby died of hypothermia or exposure while the couple lived in the tent.
- July 14, 2025:
- Both Marten and Gordon are found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter.
- September 15, 2025:
- Sentencing occurs at the Old Bailey. Constance Marten is sentenced to 14 years in prison. Mark Gordon is sentenced to 14 years in prison and an additional 4 years on extended licence due to his ‘dangerous’ history and risk to the public.
- February 12, 2026:
- The findings of the national child safeguarding review, commissioned by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel to specifically to examine the systemic failures exposed by the death of baby Victoria, is published.
Key Findings of the report include:
- The successive removal of Marten and Gordon's first four children created a deep-seated mistrust of authorities. It notes that from the parents' perspective, concealing Victoria felt like a ‘subjective rational choice’ to keep their family together, as they viewed social services as a source of harm rather than support;
- A lack of post-removal support. A major criticism of the review was the lack of support for parents after their children are taken into care. No single agency was responsible for helping the couple process their grief or loss, which the panel argued contributed to the ‘destructive cycle’ of repeat pregnancies and further evasive behaviour;
- That although authorities were aware of Gordon’s history, there were significant gaps in how that information was used to protect his children;
- Systemic Information Gaps. The review highlights the ease with which high-risk families may become ‘invisible’ by moving across local authority boundaries. The couple's ability to live off-grid for weeks was facilitated by poor information-sharing between different regional police and social work teams.
- The panel also noted a specific safeguarding gap regarding unborn infants. Because a fetus has no legal rights and women have the right to an unassisted birth, practitioners often feel powerless to intervene until a birth is disclosed, by which time a high-risk parent may have already disappeared.
Key Recommendations
The review sets out several urgent recommendations for the HM Government and Local Authorities. This includes:
- New National Guidance with explicit protocols for handling ‘concealed’ or late-disclosed pregnancies within child protection frameworks;
- Trauma-Informed Practice, where social workers are trained to recognise that ‘non-engagement’ is often a symptom of trauma and fear rather than a simple refusal to comply;
- Mandatory Police Notification. Changes to the Sexual Offences Act to require registered sex offenders to notify police if they or their partner are expecting a child;
- Cross-Boundary Protocols which include formalised, rapid information transfer processes, shared chronologies, when a high-risk family moves between Local Authorities;
- Pre-Conception Planning. The review advocates encouraging professionals to assess risk to future children for families who have already had multiple removals, rather than waiting for a new pregnancy to begin.
The report concludes that whilst Victoria’s death was not ‘predictable,’ it was ‘avoidable’ had professionals taken a more proactive, ‘forward-looking’ approach to the couple’s history. Findings call for urgent improvements in how authorities protect ‘unseen’ or ‘concealed’ babies and better information sharing across local authorities to prevent parents from evading the system by moving frequently.
In my opinion, this review is an exemplary model of best practice which does not shy away from shining the spotlight on two of the most difficult areas of child protection and safeguarding practice: parental trauma following repeated/ permanent removal of children into care, combating disengagement, rebuilding and maintaining relationships with disengaged parents to protect children in future pregnancies and births.
As Sir David Holmes, the review panel chair, states ‘To protect vulnerable babies better, we must support their parents too.’ The review ‘encourages all of us to imagine the trauma and grief of having multiple children removed one after another and to think much harder about what parents in that unenviable situation need in terms of ready access to effective support.’
Effective engagement with parents when formal child protection measures are necessary is challenging and requires a high level of skill from all professionals involved. This review serves as a reminder that when it is necessary to safeguard children and remove them from parental care, the duty of care to the parents does not cease.
SSS Learning Safeguarding Director
25 February 2026