Aristocrat Constance Marten has told jurors that her family believed she was a drug addict who was “breeding children to sell on the black market”.
Accusing them of bringing a High Court case against her in 2019 which prevented her from leaving the country, she also claimed that they had hired private investigators to follow her.
Returning to the witness stand for the third day, she said that she and her partner had planned to pay someone to smuggle their baby daughter abroad, and cited the website Gumtree as a place to source a potential candidate.
She and her partner Mark Gordon, 49, deny charges of gross negligence manslaughter of their daughter Victoria between 4 January and 27 February last year.
The 36-year-old said she was an “excellent mother” as the court heard the mother concealed her pregnancy and went on the run with Gordon after their four other children were taken into care.
Victoria died while the couple were evading authorities and living “off-grid” in a tent, and her remains were found in a Lidl shopping bag in a disused shed last March.
The couple also deny charges of perverting the course of justice by concealing the body, along with concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty, and allowing the death of a child.
The trial continues.
