In her suicide note, Catherine accused her ex-husband, Allan Kassenoff, of abusing and manipulating the court system to strip her of parental rights. It happened after their four-year-long, contentious divorce and custody battle over their three daughters.
Catherine emailed the note to numerous people, including judges and journalists, but not to Allan directly. She detailed how Allan's alleged abuse and the corrupt court system had ruined her life. Catherine's note also revealed a cancer recurrence, which she said sapped her strength to continue fighting.
After Catherine's death, Allan faced intense public backlash. TikToker Robbie Harvey shared Catherine's accusations and evidence, including videos of Allan's angry outbursts. This led to widespread outrage and harassment. Allan even received death threats and was labelled a monster. The viral attention resulted in Allan losing his job at a prestigious law firm.
The public narrative painted Allan as an abusive husband. However, he insisted that Catherine was the manipulative one. Their daughters, who had suffered through the bitter custody battle, were further traumatised by the social media frenzy and bullying at school.
“In my eyes, Catherine went through with her suicide in order to destroy me and the children,” Allan told the New York Post.
Catherine's medically-assisted suicide, according to Allan, has caused emotional pain for him and their family, which he believes was her intended goal.
A Free Press investigation reveals that things don’t look as simple as Catherine claimed.
Mylene Gry, a nanny who lived with the Kassenoffs from 2015 to 2016, told journalist Francesca Block that she read a Facebook post in March 2018.
“Careful to all au pairs who are looking for a family, I won’t advise you to work for the Kassenoff family, the mother is a psychopath,” said the post shared in a Facebook group for French nannies in the US.
However, psychiatrist Colin Brewer confirmed before Catherine’s assisted suicide that she was “not suffering from a psychiatric illness”.
She understood the “nature and purpose” of a medically-assisted suicide, he said. Brewer also told Block that cancer was “absolutely not” the reason behind her suicide.
“She was just concerned that she had been treated abominably by her husband,” he said.
Catherine's last conversation was with Katherine Klein, one of the Kassenoffs’ former nannies. Her final advice to Klein was, “Always help my children first. Never allow anyone to get between me and them.”
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