Life of girl born on plane ends in abuse, neglect, manslaughter
CBC
WARNING: This story contains details of child abuse.
A girl whose birth on an Air Canada flight made international headlines died five years later in pain and neglect in the early, isolating months of the pandemic, an Ontario Superior courtroom heard in March.
Chloe Guan-Branch's body was found in her soiled bed in an Ottawa apartment at about noon on Friday, May 15, 2020.
She had turned five just five days earlier.
In March, her mother's ex-boyfriend, Justin Cassie-Berube, was found guilty of manslaughter, criminal negligence causing death, failing to provide the necessaries of life, assault causing bodily harm and assault, all involving Chloe.
The details of Cassie-Berube's crimes were kept from the public due to a publication ban that prevented CBC from naming anyone involved or connecting Chloe's birth story to her death.
CBC is reporting the details now, months after the judgment, after successfully going to court in conjunction with Postmedia to have the ban lifted.
At the time of Chloe's death Cassie-Berube was living with her and her mother, Ada Guan, and was acting as Chloe's father, Justice Pierre Roger said in court while reading his judgment on March 1.
About a week before she died Chloe's bladder had been ruptured by blunt force, causing her body to slowly poison itself, the judge said.
In addition, her small face and body were covered in "shocking" injuries from being hit, struck, grabbed and thrown out of anger by Cassie-Berube, Roger said.
In a text Chloe's mother sent Cassie-Berube six months before Chloe's death, she mentioned the abuse:
"… It makes me mad when we said no more slapping her face and her mouth and you go and do that … I just don't wanna see her face all bruised and f--ked up no more.. I don't wanna go out and have to cover her face up just cause there's marks on it.. that's suspicious.."
Some of the assaults gave Chloe serious head injuries, cuts on her lip, rib fractures, scar tissue in her abdomen and pancreas, serious bruises near her groin and lower back, and other bruises elsewhere, the judge ruled, recounting the evidence of a forensic pathologist.
As for the fatal bladder rupture, Roger couldn't be sure if it was caused by a punch from Cassie-Berube or from falling on the rail of her bed.
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