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In Horry County, South Carolina, a movement is underway to amend the state’s domestic violence laws to include coercive control as a punishable offense. Though discussions among lawmakers are anticipated, the actual implementation of this change is at least a year away.
State Senator Stephen Goldfinch, a Republican from Murrells Inlet, expressed optimism on Monday night during a conversation with News13. He hopes his proposed bill, S. 702, will soon be addressed by the Judiciary Committee, although with the legislative crossover on April 10, any significant progress is unlikely until 2027.
Senator Goldfinch, who is also campaigning for the position of attorney general, has advocated for naming the bill “Mica’s Law” in memory of Mica Miller.
The South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault has already highlighted this measure as a legislative priority for 2026, underscoring its significance.
The tragic story of Mica Miller, who died by suicide in April 2024 at Lumber River State Park in Robeson County, North Carolina, has been a catalyst for this legislative push. Following her death, allegations emerged from her friends and family suggesting that her then-husband, John-Paul Miller, a pastor in Myrtle Beach, had subjected her to coercive control, drawing national attention to the issue.
Mica’s story has rippled across South Carolina and the country when it comes to raising awareness about domestic violence and coercive control.
The bill outlines coercive control as:
- Isolating the person from friends, relatives, or other sources of support;
- Depriving the other person of basic necessities;
- Monitoring the person’s communications, movements, daily activities and behavior, finances, economic resources, or access to services;
- Frequent name-calling, degrading and demeaning of the other person;
- Threatening to harm or kill the person or a child or relative;
- Threatening to publish private information or make reports of defamatory or false claims to police or authorities;
- Compelling the other person by force, threat of force, or intimidation to engage in conduct from which the other person has a right to abstain or to abstain from conduct in which the other party has a right to engage; or
- Engaging in reproductive coercion which consists of control over the reproductive autonomy of a person through force, threat of force, or intimidation.
Many have deemed it “Mica’s Law” before it was ever filed.
“I don’t have any problem with it being named “Mica’s Law”, but I know that there are 100 others out there,” Goldfinch told News13 in December. “I mean, that’s my only thing, is there are a lot of people out there that just didn’t get the publicity that Mica did. Hers got the publicity because there’s just a lot of bad stuff happened around the periphery of that case.”
Several states including California, Connecticut and Hawaii have adopted “coercive control” laws, while similar efforts are pending in Florida, Maryland, New York and Washington, according to the group Americas Conference to End Coercive Control.