According to childcare experts, parents who care for their babies should seek trauma-informed support to reduce the risk of harm to any subsequent babies they have.
A national child protection review, launched after baby Victoria Marten’s death, said more focus was needed on parents, as well as their vulnerable baby or unborn child, to “disrupt destructive cycles of harm”.
Victoria died in January 2023 after her parents, Constance Marten and her convicted rapist partner Mark Gordon, took her in to live in a tent over the winter. To escape from social services. In March of that year, police officers found the child’s decomposed remains.
Couple, who’s who He was sentenced to 14 years in prison last September for killing the newbornthe authorities fled without taking care of Victoria, the four older siblings had previously, heard their case at the Old Bailey.
A review published by the National Child Safeguarding Practices Review Panel said the girl’s birth was “the latest in a series of rapid pregnancies, births and removals in her family, becoming a repeating pattern with devastating consequences by the time she becomes pregnant”.
Given this family history, experts dealing with the couple “need to consider the possibility of Victoria being born earlier to have a better chance of conceiving and bonding more productively with her parents,” the review said.
Sir David Holmes, chair of the panel, said: “While baby Victoria’s death was not predictable, she was conceived.”
Holmes said it was difficult to know whether good professional engagement with baby Victoria’s parents would have prevented her death, but added: “There needs to be good engagement with families who are at risk of having children removed so that the cycle of removing children and having another baby and removing that child can be interrupted.”
The review said no agency or professional had a specific responsibility to support couples when their children were removed, “or to help them process their sense of loss and grief”.
The “successive removal” of their children “may have reinforced their awareness of the harms of children’s social care, making Victoria’s concealment seem subjectively ‘rational’.”
The review noted the couple’s “continued reluctance to engage” with authorities, having moved five times during their five pregnancies between 2017 and 2023, with “conservation concerns mounting with each move”.
The lack of co-ordinated support for couples after caring for their children leaves them “isolated and unsupported, increasing the risk to their children”, the review said.
It recognizes the complex challenges faced by protecting professionals dealing with troubled families, domestic violence, Gordon’s rape conviction and her parents’ reluctance to engage with authorities as they move across the country. All were factors in Victoria’s death.
Holmes said that while it is valid to remove children from their parents to protect them, it does not remove the root of the problems of troubled families.
He added: “It does not prevent similar situations from happening again. In fact, it increases the risk of harm to the next unborn, unborn child.”
According to the latest figures published by the Department for Education, there were 5,360 under-ones in England subject to Child Protection Plans (CPPs) on 31 March 2025. Among them, 3,930 children are under one year old and 1,430 are unborn children.
The panel recommended national guidance on infant protection and child protection to cover covert pregnancy and early birth planning for unborn babies when there are child protection risks.
The government requires registered sex offenders to notify police of the name of new partners and if they or their partner caused the birth. Failure to notify the police of these life changes could land the offender in prison, Holmes said.
Marten and Gordon Convicted in July 2025 Manslaughter of baby Victoria, child cruelty, concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice after two trials.
