Victoria Marten was a victim of our failed approach to child safeguarding

Victoria Marten was, according to her parents, born on Christmas Eve 2022. Her remains were discovered by police in a shopping bag in an allotment shed in East Sussex on 1 March 2023. Her condition was such that the pathologists could not determine a precise cause of death, but her parents, Constance Marten, the “runaway heiress”, and her partner Mark Gordon, a career criminal, were in due course found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter, child cruelty, concealing the birth of a child, and perverting the course of justice. They were each sentenced to 14 years in prison.

The story attracted considerable media attention, and the much-used phrase “shocked a nation” is aptly applied in this case. It is impossible to comprehend the suffering that baby Victoria endured during her short life and lonely death. It was entirely right that an independent inquiry be set up to look into the distressing circumstances of this extreme act of child abuse.

Equally important was the need to set the case in a national context, and to make findings and recommendations accordingly. This, the inquiry chair, Sir David Holmes, and his colleagues on the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, have now done.

It is a compassionate piece of work. The Victoria Marten case, like all such crimes of this nature, may have its own unique characteristics, but it highlights aspects of child neglect that may be relatively rare but also acute, and which lead all too easily to tragic consequences – including injury and loss of life. While fatality is mercifully rare, too many children are at risk of harm, and it is more widespread than might be imagined. According to the report, some 5,000 children under the age of one are subject to child protection plans in England, including 1,400 unborn babies. Hence the need for such a high-powered and detailed review.

Unusually for an official report, the panel consulted Constance Marten herself (Gordon declined the request) to understand better what happened and how it might be prevented. An important lesson is how perfectly correct child safeguarding measures can lead to appalling, but unintended consequences.

In the case of Marten and Gordon, they had had four previous children taken into care, including the third, which had been removed at birth. This history contributed to the concealment of the birth of Victoria and their decision to go on the run and evade the authorities.

The lesson the panel draws is that the removal of a child, or children, can act as a powerful emotional incentive for some parents to avoid asking for help – a Catch-22 for social services: “Some parents may find it psychologically impossible to trust or engage in post-removal support if this is delivered by professionals they associate with past trauma. While social workers can and do form warm relationships with parents, those who have experienced trauma may also need access to distinct, specialist support to process their experiences and rebuild trust.”

Constance Marten’s testimony to the panel informed that finding, and there is no doubt that, notwithstanding her heinous crime, she had undergone such repeated trauma as a mother. As the panel states, her “confident presentation, denial of abuse and reluctance to engage with services, all masked her own vulnerability”. This is a powerful reason for the recommendation to be adopted in the national guidelines, “Working Together to Safeguard Children”.

The panel also draws attention to a loophole in the law, which seems incredible to modern eyes, which is that there is no statutory duty for prospective parents, nor anyone else, to report and register a pregnancy, though there is for a birth. “Safeguarding” should logically cover the welfare of an unborn child – and while some will, as the Victoria Marten case shows, avoid doing so, such a change in the law might bring the safeguarding agencies to look at a pregnancy at an early stage to avoid harm.

Domestic abuse is closely linked to child abuse, and, once again, Constance Marten, having sustained life-threatening injuries during a previous pregnancy through the actions of her partner, is an example of that.

The panel also identified a lack of sufficient attention in the safeguarding system as it applies to offenders and, especially, registered sex offenders, again a feature of the Marten-Gordon case. For obvious reasons of heightened risk, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 should be amended to include a requirement to inform the police of the name of new partners, and to notify the police within a specified period of time, if they or their partner is due to give birth.

If there is a fault to be found in the panel’s report, it is not of Sir David’s making, but there are times when the implications are clear in the sometimes technical text. The panel’s remit did not cover money and budgets, but if society is to take the safeguarding of its youngest seriously, that requires money as well as improving collaboration between agencies and changing the law.

Local authorities and the probation service are among the hardest-pressed of our public services, and too often they are badly squeezed by other existing statutory obligations. That inevitably leads to horrendous consequences. The price of neglecting safeguarding is paid by neglected infants, and that cannot be tolerated.