SOCASTEE, S.C. (WBTW) — For nearly two years, advocates of Mica Miller have been outspoken in their push for justice, saying at a Sunday protest that federal charges recently filed against her estranged husband are a good first step.
“Tears. Tears of joy. My husband and I were in the car when we got the notice, and we both broke down in tears. It’s just what we wanted,” Gina Whittington said Sunday morning in front of Mercy Church on Highway 17 Bypass South.
Whittington and about a dozen others stood outside the ministry run by Mica’s estranged husband John-Paul as they have every week, holding large signs accusing him of harassment and abuse.
John-Paul on Thursday was indicted by the FBI on cyberstalking and making false claims to police after the death of Mica on April 27, 2024 at Lumber River State Park in Robeson County.
Protestor Melissa Pfeiffer said her group doesn’t plan to slow down.
“It gave us hope and the will to continue going,” she said of the indictments. “It’s a start, for sure. I think it’s the start to Justice for Mica for sure.”
If convicted, Miller could face up to five years in prison on the cyberstalking charge, two years on the false-statement charge and a fine of up to $250,000, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Jan. 12 in Florence.
The indictment alleges that between Nov. 16, 2022, and April 27, 2024, Miller “used interactive computer services, electronic communications services, electronic communication systems of interstate commerce, and other facilities of interstate and foreign commerce to engage in a course of conduct that placed Victim 1 in reasonable fear of death and serious bodily injury and caused, attempted to cause, and the course of conduct would be reasonably expected to cause Victim 1 substantial emotional distress.”
Whittington, who once was a member of Miller’s now-defunct Solid Rock Church, met Mica several times.
“I think one of the greatest things we can do in the move is change the law to where no other woman or man suffers the way that she did,” she said.
Miller, 45, was released from his ministerial duties at Solid Rock not long after Mica’s death, also allegedly “used or threatened to use nude videos and photographs” to harass his wife and posted a nude photo of her online without her permission, the indictment said. He also is accused of placing a tracking device on her vehicle and interfering with her finances and other daily activities.
Police reports and personal diaries kept by Mica revealed details of the emotional and psychological abuse she experienced. She planned to divorce John-Paul, filing separation papers the same day of her death.
Recently, state Sen. Stephen Goldfinch, R-Murells Inlet, pre-filed a bill that would make coercive control punishable under South Carolina law.
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 last week. “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.”
Pfeiffer is hopeful lawmakers agree.
“I really hope that people will get out and write their senator and try to help get that pushed along, because we need better laws,” she said.