The short, tragic life of Chloe Guan-Branch

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Warning: This story contains graphic and disturbing details that may be unsettling to some readers.

Her name was Chloe Guan-Branch, and her short, turbulent life was filled with unimaginable pain.

Her tormentor, Justin Cassie-Berube, was found guilty in March of manslaughter, assault, criminal negligence and failing to provide the necessities of life to the five-year-old girl, who suffered in severe pain for days before dying of an abdominal injury.

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Her lifeless body was found on May 15, 2020 in a bed soiled from neglect.

Cassie-Berube and the girl’s mother had refused to take the little girl to the hospital out of fear the doctors would discover bruises and other signs of physical abuse he had inflicted on Chloe.

The details of Cassie-Berube’s manslaughter trial — including his name, Chloe’s name and her mother’s name — had been shielded by a publication ban that was lifted last week following a successful court challenge initiated by the Ottawa Citizen and CBC.

Superior Court Justice Pierre Roger said the girl’s biological paternal grandparents gave their consent to lifting the publication ban, “as this would give the victim a final say.”

‘We thought we’d reminisce about the day she was born on a plane to Japan.’

Chloe was in the media spotlight the day she was born.

It was Mother’s Day 2015 when she arrived while on board an Air Canada flight from Calgary to Tokyo.

The birth story made headlines around the world as the newborn baby, her mother, Ada Guan, and her biological father, Wes Branch, were featured on national newscasts.

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Ada Guan told reporters they had no idea she was pregnant at the time. Now a little family, the couple talked about getting married and taking care of little Chloe.

They started a GoFundMe page with an initial fundraising goal of $50,000. But the plea for donors backfired, especially the lofty fundraising target, which was soon amended to $5,000. Branch was unemployed at the time and Guan worked part-time.

Criticism also ensued over Branch’s comments shortly after returning to B.C. when he said: “Who can’t take care of a baby? If you have cats, you’re going to be able to take care of a baby.”

Baby Chloe was taken out of her parents’ care by the Children’s Aid Society a few months after she was born. She was only returned to her mother at age three, according to a summary of the evidence in Cassie-Berube’s trial.

Her paternal grandparents, Sandra and David Branch, said the family became estranged after Guan and Wes Branch split up about a year after Chloe was born.

While the Branch family stayed in B.C., Ada Guan moved to Alberta. While living there, she met Justin Cassie-Berube online. In February 2019, Guan and little Chloe moved to Ottawa to live with Cassie-Berube. The three of them shared an apartment on Meadowlands Drive.

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The Branch family said they weren’t aware that Chloe and her mother were living in Ottawa until they got a call from an Ottawa police detective telling them their granddaughter had died.

“We didn’t know where they moved to. We didn’t get to know her, except when she was a baby,” Sandra Branch wrote in a victim impact statement filed in court on behalf of herself, David and Wes Branch. “We were hoping one day we could meet her. We thought we’d reminisce about the day she was born on a plane to Japan.”

‘I just don’t wanna see her face all bruised and f—ed up no more.’

Cassie-Berube led a controlling relationship over Chloe’s mother, with fits of jealousy and threats to commit suicide if she left him, which she had contemplated doing numerous times over their 15-month relationship, according to the judge’s summary of the trial.

A neighbour testified at Cassie-Berube’s trial and said she noticed an injury to Chloe’s arm in August 2019. The neighbour recalled another incident around Christmas 2019 where she saw Chloe’s leg was injured and her face was “shocking, bruised and banged up.”

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Cassie-Berube told the neighbour Chloe had hurt herself when she fell off her bed.

Investigators recovered text messages from November 2019 where Guan complained to Cassie-Berube:  “I just don’t wanna see her face all bruised and f—ed 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.”

He responded: “OK. I’m sorry I understand what u mean, u do have every right to yell and get mad. I’m sorry for what I did.”

Guan also testified that Cassie-Berube was violent with Chloe, that he “grabbed her and tossed her around, spanked her, put soap in her mouth, smacked her lips and face, threw her on the bed, squeezed her ankles, grabbed her forearm, yanked her forward, and hit her on top of the head with a wooden spoon.”

Chloe had long dark hair and a room full of Frozen toys, as seen through photo albums entered as evidence. On New Year’s Eve 2019, she and Cassie-Berube are in full embrace for the camera. The caption on the instant photo reads: “Daddy & Chloe xoxo.”

She was increasingly isolated during the early days of COVID-19, according to the judge’s summary. Cassie-Berube and Guan were “essentially alone” with her in their apartment during the pandemic lockdowns.

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Cassie-Berube “used Chloe as a punching bag when he was angry” at the child, according to Guan’s testimony.

Chloe suffered a ruptured bladder on May 9, 2020, around supper time on the eve of her fifth birthday.

During his testimony at his trial, Cassie-Berube admitted to beating the child violently, though he denied punching her in the stomach and said the girl suffered the injury when she fell onto her bed railing.

Pathologists could not determine whether the rupture was caused by a punch, or from a fall into a bed rail, as Cassie-Berube also claimed during his police interview.

He told detectives he drank excessively and often blacked out in the two months prior to the child’s death.

He also told police he needed help if he was “the monster that hurt a little girl… because I’m the one that caused everything that’s happening right now.”

Bruises were the “main reason” Chloe not taken to hospital

Police arrived at the Meadowland apartment on May 15, 2020. Cassie-Berube had called 911 in a “highly panicked” state after finding Chloe’s lifeless body in her bed around noon that day.

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She had a “shocking” number of bruises and injuries when doctors examined her, according to the judge’s summary. Chloe had suffered in severe pain for days from the bladder rupture.

The forensic pathologist who examined her body concluded the rupture was caused by blunt impact abdominal trauma to a full bladder.

Chloe had exhibited symptoms for days, including a hard stomach. She was grunting in pain, lethargic and vomiting, lacking appetite, thirsty, unable to hold down food, soiling herself, and in obvious need of “imperative” medical attention, according to a pathologist.

The bruises on the girl’s body were the “main reason” they did not take her to the hospital, Guan testified. She said that Chloe became so sick in her final days she had to be carried to the bathroom.

Guan told Cassie-Berube they should take Chloe to the hospital, according to the judge’s summary of her testimony. Cassie-Berube replied that they could not take her to see a doctor because her bruises “would raise a lot of questions.”

Guan didn’t pursue the topic, she testified, because she didn’t want to make Cassie-Berube angry.

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She searched for remedies on the internet, including a search query for “what relaxes stomach muscles,” according to the trial summary.

Forensic pathologists documented the fatal bladder laceration, along with visible injuries to her face, lips, and chin that were “impossible not to notice… contradicting Cassie-Berube’s narrative that he had not noticed bruises on the child.”

There was a serious injury to her head caused by blunt force, which likely occurred in May 2020 and left two purple bruises on the back of her head. She had a laceration on her head that possibly dated to November 2019, recently healed rib fractures, multiple bruises on her groin and buttocks that “were not from a simple fall,” multiple bruises on her abdomen from blunt force impacts inflicted within days of her death and multiple bruises on her arms that were “hours to days in age.”

They photographed “possible cigarettes burn marks on her left lower hip area.”

There was also evidence Chloe was being further abused while she was suffering in pain from the bladder rupture. Some of the cuts on her face had been inflicted within “a small number of days prior to her death.”

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The young girl’s body had numerous bruises and injuries when she was examined by forensic pathologists, with disturbing evidence of abuse that would have “gravely alarmed any health practitioner examining the child,” the judge ruled.

Chloe died of acute uremia, a condition that causes severe pain and induces nausea and vomiting as waste seeps into the bloodstream. It attacks the central nervous system and leads to coma and death if untreated.

In his guilty verdict on March 1, the judge said Cassie-Berube was “not believable when he attempted to minimize his role in these sad circumstances.

“(Cassie-Berube) contradicted himself numerous times, admitted that he lied on occasion, and at times grossly embellished parts of his narrative,” including a “fairytale” version of the child’s fifth birthday on May 10 that Cassie-Berube completely fabricated during his police interview.

Cassie-Berube was found guilty on all six charges he faced.

Justice Roger is expected to render his sentence on June 24.

ahelmer@postmedia.com

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