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On April 27, 2024, 30-year-old Mica Miller called 911 to report that she was going to take her own life. Later that day, she was found dead of a gunshot wound in a state park — her death ruled a suicide. She had recently filed for legal separation from her husband, John-Paul Miller, a South Carolina pastor, and soon, allegations surfaced that he had abused her.
Mica was a victim of “coercive control,” said her family. It’s a term that describes nonphysical tactics abusers use to dominate and trap their partners, including financial manipulation, isolation and surveillance. According to Mica’s attorney, Regina Ward, she told people and wrote in journals about alleged ways her husband tried to control her: cutting her off from loved ones, depriving her of sleep, threatening to kill himself, hacking her electronics, tracking her whereabouts, stealing her belongings, slashing her tires and removing her from shared bank accounts — all known tactics of coercive control. John-Paul has denied abusing Mica, and his lawyer has called the allegations “unfounded rumors and false accusations.”
Mica’s case became national news, and a South Carolina lawmaker filed a bill this April that would make it a felony to engage in coercive control. Mica’s family believes these laws could have saved her life. Police revealed that in the months before she died, she had spoken to police numerous times about someone damaging her car, and mechanics finding multiple tracking devices placed on it.
This is the fourth time a version of this legislation has been considered in South Carolina, and it’s part of a larger movement that’s sweeping the country. Since 2020, more than half a dozen states have passed coercive control laws, and bills are pending in several other states, including Maine, Kentucky and New York.
Almost all of the new state laws add coercive control to domestic violence definitions in civil or family court, compelling judges to consider these patterns when making decisions about child custody or protective orders, which can result in an arrest if violated. The only state to directly criminalize it so far is Hawaii, where, in 2021, lawmakers made coercive control a petty misdemeanor as part of a five-year pilot program. State lawmakers in Washington tried and failed to make it a gross misdemeanor, and a bill to make it a felony is pending in New York.
Proponents say these changes are crucial because they remedy gaps in the current domestic violence legal framework, allowing for judicial interventions when physical violence is minor or not happening at all.
Experts say physical violence is just one of the ways that dominance is maintained in intimate-partner relationships, while coercive control — a known risk factor for abuse that can escalate to assault and even murder — is often thought of as less dangerous or damaging. But that is not the case, said Joan Meier, director of the National Family Violence Law Center at the George Washington University Law School.
Meier said that coercive control is often more dangerous and pervasive than physical violence. There’s a feeling of ownership over the victim, she said. “It’s the ‘If I can’t have you, nobody can’ kind of attitude, whereas violence, per se, isn’t always necessarily that.”
In a study reviewing relationship dynamics that preceded hundreds of murders of abused women from 11 American cities, researchers found that when women tried to leave relationships, which heightens the risk of homicide, it was “highly controlling” male partners who presented the most danger in those situations. In another study that examined the progression of relationships behind 25 homicides of women by male partners, researchers found that controlling behavior was present in each relationship.
And while physical abuse is highly correlated with intimate-partner homicide, it’s not present in every case. It’s estimated that from 67% to 80% of murders committed by current or former partners involved physical abuse of a woman by a man.
Meier said she and others have struggled in vain for decades to get judges to understand the importance of nonphysical abuse patterns when assessing their cases, but that the legal system remains focused on specific incidents of violence.
Efforts to change this got a boost in 2022, when the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, an association of specialized legal professionals, added coercive control to the model legislation it promotes for state lawmakers to adopt. Meier was involved in revising the model code, stating that protecting victims from potential misuse of the law was a major focus. Meanwhile, efforts to criminalize coercive control have less support among advocates: “That’s a dicier question,” she said.
Indeed, advocates for domestic violence victims are concerned that coercive control laws will end up hurting the people they are trying to help. They say the legal definitions are vague, potentially leaving the law open to manipulation by abusers.
Kristine Lizdas, a legal director for the Battered Women’s Justice Project, notes in a policy brief that taking money, breaking things or reading a partner’s private messages could be interpreted as coercive control under some state statutes, for example. But those same actions could also be taken by someone who is strategizing an escape, the report warns. Even in cases of physical violence, judges often misinterpret a victim’s defensive actions as mutual violence, and attempting to codify coercive control could make these cases even more difficult, Lizdas said.
The movement to expand definitions of domestic violence has gained momentum internationally. The United Kingdom, Ireland and parts of Australia have all enacted laws to make coercive control a criminal offense, and a similar bill was pending in Canada last year. Andrew Tate, a social media influencer accused of sexual violence and coercive control, will be tried in a first-of-its-kind civil case in Britain to decide whether his alleged use of these tactics would represent the “intentional infliction of harm.” But courts in America haven’t been as open to the concept. Just this spring, the judge in the criminal trial against Sean “Diddy” Combs did not allow the prosecution’s domestic violence expert to discuss coercive control.
Despite the changing landscape and disagreement between advocates, information about the potential impact of these new laws is limited. In Hawaii, prosecutors filed 736 petty misdemeanor domestic violence cases from July 2021 — when the law took effect — to June 2023, according to a spokesperson for the Hawaii State Judiciary. But it’s not clear how many of those were specifically coercive control cases.
In family courts, judges in states where the law has changed have started issuing decisions that take coercive control into account. In a 2023 California case, a judge granted a mother full custody of her child and a permanent restraining order against her ex-husband, who had written hundreds of pages of rules for her to follow. It was one of the first cases nationwide where coercive control alone was the basis for a finding of domestic violence. And in another 2023 case out of Washington, a woman trying to get a divorce requested a temporary protection order against her husband, who owned multiple guns. She alleged that he had made regular suicide threats. A judge agreed her husband was trying to coerce and intimidate her, granted her a protection order, and also ordered that the husband temporarily lose access to his guns.
But even supporters admit that wide adoption of these laws won’t lead to universal success. Meier recalled a recent case she consulted on where a woman sought a protection order against her partner, who cross-filed for the same, citing coercive control, and the judge dismissed both cases.
Advocates worry this type of outcome could disproportionately affect survivors of color, who often face heightened scrutiny by police and courts.
“The people who have the hardest time staking out their claim to victimhood are the ones most likely to have some of these laws used against them,“ said Courtney Cross, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “And people who engage in coercive control are really, really good at controlling the narrative.”
