Baby Victoria was a victim of safeguarding loopholes

Victoria Marten was, according to her parents, born on Christmas Eve 2022.

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Her remains were discovered by police in a shopping bag in an allotment shed in East Sussex on 1 March 2023. Victoria’s 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.