Judge Under Fire After Daughter Posts Video of Beating

A Texas judge is facing a police investigation along with death threats after his daughter posted a video of a severe beating she endured in 2004, reports KRIS TV. The disturbing seven-minute clip has racked up more than 600,000 views on YouTube after Hillary Adams shared it on Reddit. "My father's harassment was getting really bad, so I decided to finally publish the video that I had been sitting on for seven years," she tells the TV station. The response from Aransas County Court Judge William Adams: "It happened years ago. ... I apologized." He added, "It's not as bad as it looks on tape."

The tape shows a screaming Hillary getting struck repeatedly with a belt, apparently because she had disobeyed her father by downloading music off the Internet. "She has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father's backwards views," says the text accompanying the video. Reddit has a "strong protective streak," notes Gawker, and its users have quickly spread the story. (More YouTube stories.)