The publication of The Katie Simpson Review on 27 April 2026 marks a pivotal, albeit devastating, moment for legal reform in Northern Ireland. Commissioned by the Minister of Justice in the absence of traditional mechanisms like a Domestic Homicide Review (DHR), the report exposes the systemic invisibility of femicide within Northern Ireland’s legal system (Department of Justice, 2026). The Review accepts accountability for the litany of safeguarding and investigative failures surrounding Katie’s death, yet it also maintains a conspicuous silence, stopping short of naming the crime for what it is: femicide.
Although the Review draws many important conclusions and offers various recommendations, its reliance on the term “concealed homicide” is problematic and demands urgent interrogation. From a feminist jurisprudential lens, describing the killing of Katie Simpson as a “concealed homicide” is inherently weak. It is a sanitised, neutral descriptor; a nomenclature of convenience that obscures the gendered motivation surrounding Katie’s murder, as well as the life of violence and misogynistic abuse that she was subjected to when the events leading up to her death are closely scrutinised.
As The Katie Simpson Review acknowledges, “Jonathan Creswell subjected Katie to a brutal regime of grooming, coercive control, verbal degradation, and physical abuse. He manipulated her and stripped away her autonomy until she was trapped in a state of domestic servitude. His abuse was calculated, sustained, and designed to control her” (Department of Justice, 2026, p.15). The report highlights the longstanding nature of the abuse, stating that, “The pattern of coercive behaviour and abuse, described by witnesses, started when the Katie was just 10 years old” (Department of Justice, 2026, p.13). The report also exposes some elements of modern slavery, stating that, “He also worked Katie very hard…removing Katie from GCSE classes to work with him.” (Department of Justice, 2026, p.13). This demonstrates that Creswell’s grooming, treatment and eventual killing of Katie was deeply rooted in control and misogyny.
The systemic failures which set the stage for a perpetrator to successfully conceal an intimate partner femicide as a suicide for almost seven months despite no previous history of mental illness or suicidal tendencies on the part of the victim reveal more than just a simple investigative lapse; they expose a systemic vulnerability reinforced by institutional misogyny. Maintaining such a system is complicit in perpetuating patriarchal violence, and the legal frameworks in Northern Ireland require urgent reform to address this widespread societal issue. Thirty women have been murdered by men in Northern Ireland since 2020, and it is one of the most dangerous places in Europe for women and girls. There is a need for urgent change and that change must come in the form of femicide legislation.
Defining the Wide Spectrum of Femicide
The feminist concept of ‘femicide’ has been defined by Russell (Radford and Russell, 1992, p. xi) as, “the misogynistic killing of women by men.” Based on Orlock’s creation of the word ‘femicide’ in an unpublished anthology that Russell had come across in 1974, Russell subsequently put forth a definition of this new word “as one that might refer to the killing of women by men because they are women” (Radford and Russell, 1992, p. xiv).
Russell has argued that “we have long needed such a term as an alternative to the gender-neutral homicide. Establishing a word that signifies the killing of females is an important step toward making known this ultimate form of violence against women. Naming an injustice, and thereby providing a means of thinking about it, usually precedes the creation of a movement against it” (Radford and Russell, 1992, p. xiv).
Although Russell put forth a useful definition, it remains a contested term and there is no universally accepted definition that outlines its definitive meaning, it’s scope or its parameters. In other words, femicide is not always recognised as a singular act, but represents a broad spectrum of violence that is rooted in structural inequality. Many jurisdictions have adopted or adapted the term to address the most fatal form of violence against women and girls and to strengthen legislative frameworks.
Russell (2001, p. 176) famously described femicide as “some men’s ‘final solution’ for women,” emphasising that those in power often feel entitled to use whatever force is necessary to maintain their patriarchal dominance. This typology, recognised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), includes intimate partner femicide (IPF), so-called ‘honour’-related killings, and political femicide, which refers to the intentional killing of women and girls where the state or political system is seen as complicit due to negligence, impunity, or the continuous normalisation of misogyny. This list is not exhaustive, and there are many forms of femicide which are recognised worldwide.
The Sub-Phenomena of Femicide
However, it is the sub-phenomena of femicide that often allow most perpetrators to evade justice. Although there are many sub-phenomena, two critical categories emerge in the context of the Katie Simpson case. The first one is the concept of ‘staged’ femicide. This is a forensic and investigative category where the perpetrator deliberately manipulates the crime scene and the events surrounding the victim’s death to mimic suicide or accident to evade detection. It is a procedural femicide in the sense that it represents the killing of the victim followed by the killing or silencing of the victim’s truth. The second one is the concept of ‘domestic violence-induced suicide’. This occurs where the victim eventually takes her own life as a direct result of the “totalising” regime of coercive control and prolonged sexual, physical and psychological violence (Fitz-Gibbon and Vasil, 2023, p. 136).
The Phenomenon of Staged Femicide: The Final Act of Control
In the Katie Simpson case, the crime scene was staged as a suicide by the perpetrator, Jonathan Creswell, to tell a story that the PSNI was already primed to believe due to deep rooted institutional misogyny. Various efforts by members of the public to alert the PSNI to Creswell’s previous 2010 conviction for strangling and physically abusing his former partner, Abi Lyle, were not taken seriously. He had also reportedly threatened to throw Abi into a bath of bleach (BBC, 2024). He also subjected former partners to coercive control as well as economic abuse. Strangulation specifically is a primary red flag for potential violent behaviours or fatalities. The fact that he was granted bail despite his history of offending represents a grave judicial failure that eventually facilitated a slow-motion femicide.
Creswell claimed to have found Katie hanging on August 3rd, 2020. He alerted the emergency services and pretended to perform CPR on her on the way to the hospital. It was later revealed that he was actually putting her phone on airplane mode and taking active steps to dispose of it during this time. Staging relies heavily on the deeply sexist ‘suicidal woman’ trope. This means that, by altering or fabricating the scene, the perpetrator exploits longstanding investigative biases that view abused women as emotional or mentally unstable rather than recognising, and safeguarding them, from the danger they inhabit.
When the PSNI accepted the staged narrative, they became unwitting co-authors of the perpetrator’s script. Ultimately, such investigative complicity stems from a lack of a feminist lens or an understanding of the wide spectrum of femicide and its sub-phenomena. As Bray (2023, p.105) argues, when intimate partner violence is overlooked or downplayed, coronial and police investigations “invisibilise” its causative role in death, thereby eliminating a broad range of expertise about gender-based violence and killing from the process.
The Red Flags of the “Rural Woman”
Katie’s status as a rural woman from Tynan in County Armagh is also a vital intersectional point. In rural Northern Ireland, structural conditions such as isolation, social policing, and the lack of immediate bystander intervention due to the remote nature of one’s location, make coercive control and isolation of the victim much more effective. Creswell took persistent measures to isolate Katie, moving her around various locations before eventually moving her to Gortnessy Meadows in Lettershandoney, near Derry.
Isolation thereby acts as a silent witness that perpetrators of staged femicide rely upon, and it eliminates the potential for others to witness the violence, abuse, or the final fatal act of femicide. The various missed opportunities to safeguard Katie were not just investigative; they were systemic, and they must be addressed within Northern Ireland’s legislative framework if we are to see meaningful change when it comes to safeguarding women and girls from misogynistic violence.
The Spectrum of Responsibility: Induced Suicide
The labelling of Katie’s death as a suicide despite no clear evidence of mental health issues or suicidal tendencies is deeply concerning. This is because, even if forensic evidence had initially pointed toward suicide (which it did not, due to the inconsistent marks on her body and the trauma to her vagina as well as the fact that she was not fully clothed), feminist jurisprudence demands we interrogate the wider “spectrum of Responsibility.” Fitz-Gibbon and Vasil (2023, p. 136) note that women’s deaths by suicide often follow prolonged patterns of coercive control and systematic inequalities, yet these deaths remain under-recognised in research and policy.
The 2022 United Nations Statistical Framework for Measuring the Gender Related Killing of Women and Girls represents a cautious but important first step by recognizing instigated suicide, which is described as unlawful death following incitement or harassment, as a form of gender-related killing.
Scotland has also recently taken a significant step toward recognising domestic violence-induced suicide. In the sentencing remarks for HMA v Lee Milne (10 April 2026), the defendant was convicted of culpable homicide for the role he played in the death of his wife, Kimberley Milne. The court found that his persistent abusive behaviour from January 2022 until July 2023 directly led to her decision to take her own life. Although Scotland does not have designated femicide legislation, Lady Drummond acknowledged the life of misogyny that contributed to the suicide of Kimberley, stating in court during Milne’s sentencing hearing:
“…you repeatedly abused Kimberley Milne. Some of that abuse involved physical violence including seizing her by the neck, restricting her breathing, repeatedly punching her on the head and body, striking her so that she fell and lost consciousness, and repeatedly choking her. The abuse was not only physical. You belittled her by shouting and swearing at her, calling her names, you tried to cut her off from her family, checked her phone, restricted her movements, and controlled her access to money and transport. Domestic abuse is rarely about one incident. It is not only about violent acts. It includes more subtle, but nonetheless as harmful, exertions of power and control in a relationship. It builds over time. Each act—whether physical, psychological, or financial—adds to the next, increasing pressure and fear, eroding confidence and independence. It is the cumulative effect of the varied types of abuse that makes domestic abuse so harmful and damaging” (Judiciary of Scotland, Sentencing Statements, HMA v Lee Milne, April 10th, 2026).
In the Katie Simpson case, the distinction between a staged death and an induced death is a matter of physics, not guilt. When Katie’s death is viewed as a femicide, it means that either outcome, whether suicide or homicide, can both be categorised as culpable deaths caused by misogyny when the wider context and circumstances surrounding the victim’s death are considered.
Global Frameworks: From Femicide to Feminicidio
If Northern Ireland is to move beyond its current cycle of institutional misogyny, it must look toward jurisdictions that have successfully codified state accountability into their legislative frameworks. While the term ‘femicide’ entered the feminist lexicon via Radford and Russell (1992) as the “lethal culmination of patriarchal control,” the concept has been further radicalised by Latin American scholarship to address the role of the state. In the Mexican context, anthropologist Marcela Lagarde (2015) suggested a departure from the literal translation of femicidio, which in Spanish may merely imply the feminine equivalent of homicide. Instead, Lagarde developed the concept of feminicidio (feminicide) to better emphasise the gender-based power dynamics and the systemic nature of these crimes (Mobayed et al., 2023, p. 202). Lagarde (2015) stressed that feminicide is not merely a private crime but a public failure; it encompasses the “tolerance of society towards these crimes, as well [as] the responsibility of the State to guarantee citizens’ lives and to enforce justice” (Mobayed et al., 2023, p. 202).
This ‘state accountability’ lens offers a useful model for the system that is urgently required in Northern Ireland, given the unprecedented spike in female murders in the region in recent years. Currently, the UK wide approach largely treats such killings as domestic tragedies or policing failures. In contrast, the Mexican framework, which has its roots in the landmark Cotton Field v. Mexico case at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, stipulates that the state is responsible when a lack of due diligence facilitates violence. In the Katie Simpson case, the state (via the PSNI) failed this due diligence standard by ignoring red flags, accepting a staged suicide narrative and buying into the trope of the mentally unstable woman. The PSNI’s acceptance of this staging is a textbook example of the institutional indifference and complicity that Lagarde warns against.
Mexican law (and the Salgado v. Mexico precedent) may also serve as a useful model for Northern Ireland to consider, because it mandates that every violent death of a woman must be investigated as a femicide from the outset until it is proven otherwise. Had this model been applied in Northern Ireland, the first 48 hours of the Katie Simpson investigation would have been radically transformed. Instead of the PSNI’s ability to automatically believe the suicide script, which allowed the perpetrator to dispose of critical forensic evidence such as a mobile phone, investigators would have been legally mandated to treat the scene as a femicide based on the history of the relationship or indeed the history of the perpetrator and his previous offending. By formalising coercive control and prior strangulation as lethal precursors rather than isolated, separate offenses, the Mexican blueprint renders the staged suicide almost a legal impossibility. For a post-conflict jurisdiction like Northern Ireland, where institutional trust has historically been low, shifting the focus from the perpetrator’s psyche to the state’s mandatory duty to protect is the only path toward impactful legislative reform.
Conclusion: From Neutrality to Reform
The Katie Simpson case exposes the urgent need to examine the intersection between staged femicide and domestic violence-induced suicide in Northern Ireland. In the Simpson case, the concealment was twofold: Creswell’s physical staging of the scene and Katie’s prolonged psychological concealment of a life lived under terror and coercion.
The current coronial role is often described as “remedial, forward-looking and preventative” (Bray, R.S. 2023, p. 106). However, if we are to truly honour that role, Northern Ireland must move toward enacting designated femicide legislation. This would create a statutory duty to investigate domestic suicides with the same rigor as homicides, recognise the gender-based motivations for the killing, and ensure that concealment, whether physical or psychological, is no longer a get-out-of-jail-free card for abusers. The PSNI’s failure in the Simpson case was not a mere oversight; it was a misogynistic and structural refusal to recognise women as victims of gender-based killing and urgent lessons from the Katie Simpson Review need to be implemented into Northern Ireland’s legislative framework.
Nichola McNulty is an NINE (ESRC) doctoral candidate at Queen’s University Belfast
References
BBC News (2024) ‘Katie Simpson murder accused had “violent past”, ex-partner says’, 25 April. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-68895803 (Accessed: 10 May 2026).
Bray, R.S. (2023) ‘Coroners, Femicide, and the Politics of Preventability’, in Fitz-Gibbon, K. and Walklate, S. (eds.) Femicide: Problems, Possibilities and Prevention. Bingley: Emerald Publishing, pp. 101–118.
Department of Justice (2026) The Katie Simpson Review: Learning & Recommendations. Reviewer: Dr Jan Melia. Belfast: Department of Justice Northern Ireland.
Fitz-Gibbon, K. and Vasil, S. (2023) ‘Suicide and Femicide: Rendering Histories of Violence Visible in Women’s Deaths from Suicide’, in Fitz-Gibbon, K. and Walklate, S. (eds.) Femicide: Problems, Possibilities and Prevention. Bingley: Emerald Publishing, pp. 135–152.
Judiciary of Scotland (2026) Sentencing Statements: HMA v Lee Milne. Available at: https://judiciary.scot/home/sentences-judgments/sentences-and-opinions/2026/04/10/hma-v-lee-milne (Accessed: 10 May 2026).
Mobayed, S., Frias, S.M., de Lachica Huerta, F. and Lujan-Pinelo, A. (2023) ‘Feminicide in Mexico’, in Dawson, M. and Mobayed Vega, S. (eds.) The Routledge International Handbook on Femicide and Feminicide. London: Routledge, pp. 201–211.
Radford, J. and Russell, D.E.H. (eds.) (1992) Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Russell, D.E.H. (2001) ‘Defining Femicide and Related Concepts’, in Russell, D.E.H. and Harmes, R.A. (eds.) Femicide in Global Perspective. New York: Teachers College Press, pp. 12–28.
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