HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — A yearslong push by domestic violence advocates to criminalize coercive control is taking major step forward this week, with a state Senate panel ready for input on the issue.
At 9 a.m. Wednesday, a Senate Judiciary subcommittee will take up S. 702, a measure co-sponsored by Republicans Stephen Goldfinch of Murrells Inlet and Larry Grooms of Bonneau.
Dubbed “Mica’s Law” by many before it was even filed, 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.
Goldfinch — who’s running for attorney general — has said he supports branding his bill as “Mica’s Law” in honor of Mica Miller…