Runaway aristocrat Constance Marten was ‘groomed by Nigerian sect leader as a teenager’

Runaway aristocrat Constance Marten was allegedly “groomed” by a Nigerian sect leader as a teenager, reportedly.

The 35-year-old, who has been charged with the manslaughter of her baby ‘Victoria’ for gross negligence along with her lover Mark Gordon, spent six months in a compound near the country’s capital Lagos as a teenager.

While there, she is believed to have been forced to stay in a dormitory of 50 girls who were watched by armed guards, starved, woken for Bible readings, and forced to call the leader “dad.”

A former partner said her time there had left her traumatised, while a former member of the same cult revealed that she would have been forced to engage in “intensive” work while at the compound.

Marten and Gordon currently remain in custody after a seven-week manhunt for them and their son ended last week, ahead of a hearing at the Old Bailey later this month into their involvement in Victoria’s death.

Marten, who grew up on a £100m estate in Dorset and whose grandmother was a goddaughter of the late Queen Mother, is believed to have traveled to Nigeria as a teenager.

In Lagos he joined the Synagogue, Church of All Nations (SCOAN), a Christian sect led by televangelist Temitope Balogun Joshua, more popularly known as TB Joshua.

Joe Hurst, a former British soldier who joined the group but left before Marten arrived in 2006, said she spoke to him years later to tell him that she and other white people at the compound were humiliated by the controversial pastor.

speaking to the independentHurst said she claimed she was forced to eat Joshua’s leftovers and placed in social exile, a punishment given to members who were “not focused enough” on the pastor or who spoke about their lives before entering the compound. .

She added that when talking about what happened at the compound, she asked: ‘How could God let this happen to us?’

Matthew McNaught, the author of a book on the megachurch, said she had contacted him several years later when she was “trying to understand what happened to her,” adding: “I was confused and traumatized.”

The church has been embroiled in a series of controversies, with other Nigerian pastors calling Joshua, who died in 2021 at the age of 57, an ‘impostor’.

In April 2021, YouTube suspended his channel, Emmanuel TV, after he claimed that homosexuality was the result of demonic spirit possession.

Marten’s former partner, Francis Agolo, 44, was cited by Sun saying the experience in Nigeria seemed to have been ‘traumatic’ for her, adding: ‘She [Marten] he would shut up when talking about his time there.

He added: ‘When I met Constance, she was loving and caring. She seems very out of place.

Marten had previously opened up about the experience in an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine, in which she revealed that she was one of 50 girls sharing a bedroom at a religious cult.

She added, “The leader looked me in the eye and said, ‘Your family doesn’t matter anymore. I’m your father now.'”

Marten and Gordon, 48, have been charged with gross negligence manslaughter, concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice after ‘Victoria’ was found in a shed in Brighton on Wednesday.

At a hearing before magistrates in Crawley on Friday it was said the girl was found wrapped in a plastic bag and buried under a pile of nappies in a plot.

It was a tragic conclusion to a 53-day national search for the couple, who went missing in January, raising concerns for their well-being and that of the child.

The aristocrat was seen smiling and blowing Gordon a kiss in front of a packed courtroom audience, during which they spoke only to confirm their names, dates of birth and that they had no fixed address.

Jeremy King, the prosecutor, told Crawley Magistrates Court 1: “A placenta was discovered on 5th January this year in an abandoned motor vehicle with Miss Marten’s passport next to it.” Miss Marten had been in a relationship with Mr Gordon since 2015.

He said a missing persons campaign was launched.

King said the couple had been traveling around the country using taxis and staying in hotels. In Whitechapel they were seen shopping for camping equipment and were last seen in Newhaven on CCTV near the ferry.

King said: ‘They initially refused to answer any questions from the police. An exhaustive search was conducted in a weedy allotment parcel.

‘Inside a locked shed, wrapped in a plastic bag under nappies, the baby was found inside. Life was declared extinct.

Crawley magistrates were told the court case would be transferred to London’s Central Criminal Court.

Lewes Power KQ, defending Marten, said that while there would not be a bail application on Marten’s behalf today, but that he was ‘notifying the court’, there would be one at a future date.

Marten and Gordon had been arrested by police in the Hollingbury area of ​​Brighton on Monday evening, after being spotted by a member of the public earlier in the day.

It ended a nationwide police manhunt that began when they fled seven weeks ago with their baby, but when police found them, the child was nowhere to be seen.

However, the couple did not have their newborn baby when officers swooped in to arrest them.

Sussex detectives and the Metropolitan Police have launched a massive search of a public plot of land close to where they were arrested.

Search teams with sniffer dogs, drones, helicopters and officers wearing heat-seeking kits battled to find the body.

They alerted the police, who immediately pounced on an area of ​​woods and parcels that had not yet been searched by the officers.

At a news conference, Metropolitan Police Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford said it was clear the baby’s remains had been there for “several weeks”.

Marten and Gordon will appear before the Old Bailey on March 31.