Public ‘needs better understanding of coercive control’, says aunt of murdered showjumper Katie Simpson

An aunt of murdered showjumper Katie Simpson has said the public needs to have a better understanding of the nature of “coercive control”.

Paula Mullan was among those who attended the launch of a research report commissioned by Foyle’s Women’s Aid into the links between intimate partner violence and paramilitary coercive control.

Katie Simpson (21) died days after she was fatally assaulted by former jockey Jonathan Creswell, who took his own life after the first day of his April murder trial.

There is no suggestion that Ms Simpson’s death was paramilitary-linked. However, Ms Mullan attended as Foyle Women’s Aid has supported Ms Simpson’s family, and she spoke to The Irish News about the wider issues around coercive control.

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Ms Mullan described some of the material in the report “as hard to listen to”.

“At the same time it was very good. I got a wee bit more understanding from it about coercive control, which I think a lot of the public needs to understand more. Today helped me,” she said.

“I was not aware of the extent of coercive control or how it could operate. It can happen in so, so many different ways. It can happen just in an ordinary family, or it can happen to a professional. It can happen to anybody.

“As a family, we are having great support from the likes of Marie [Brown] and Foyle Women’s Aid, great support. We are getting there, slowly.”

She added that Ms Simpson’s inquest is due to take place later this month.

“We never really had a trial, so I think it will help the family too in a strange way. It will be hard to listen to, I’m sure, some of it but at the same time, I think sometimes you have to comfort things and heal from it too,” said Ms Mullan.

Earlier, Prof Aisling Swaine from University College Dublin told the event that “paramilitary conventions have an explicit presence and are used in a tactical way within a community, home or relationship”.

“The coercer. Or the wider group, use paramilitary convention as a strategic instrument, to threaten, instil fear and ultimately exert control over a woman,” she said.

“It is evident that women affected by paramilitaries live their lives within a coercive net of implicit and explicit coercion and control.”

Prof Swaine told The Irish News, believing women when they “tell us about the realities of the abuse they are experiencing” was crucial.

“Their experiences of violence within their relationship is intensified by the layers of paramilitary coercive control that is happening at their community level, and that we take that seriously and address the violence they experience, not just in their relationships, but also at the wider community levels,” she added.

Justice Minister Naomi Long, who also spoke at the event, said “where paramilitarism is involved, [coercive control] exists at community level.

“Women who are experiencing sexual abuse in their intimate partner relationships, to break free of that is incredibly difficult, but when that is layered with coercive control that goes on in communities, by paramilitaries, it becomes almost impossible for women to navigate,” she said.

The event was chaired by Alyson Kilpatrick, Chief Commissioner of the NI Human Rights Commission.

She said society could not let coercive control of communities go on any longer.

“It has already gone on far too long,” she said, “because we have not been prepared to confront the reality of it.”

Conference organiser, Marie Brown, CEO of Foyle Women’s Aid said she wanted those present to “take away an understanding of what is happening to these women in these communities and the level of threat they have, from everywhere.”

Read the full report - ‘When you know what they are capable of: Paramilitary-related Gendered Coercive Control’ .