WARNING: The video below contains some disturbing and violent scenes. Judge William Adams, for a period of approximately 7 minutes, repeatedly beat his sixteen year old daughter with a belt despite her pleas for him to stop. The beatings were allegedly due to the fact that Hillary Adams, the judge’s daughter who was beaten, had illegally downloaded music and games from the Internet.
A father beating his daughter may not be as unusual as we might hope it to be, but what is certainly unusual is that Hillary Adams managed to capture her own beating on a video camera that she had left running. This all occurred in 2004. Hillary is now 23 years old and at the end of last month uploaded the video to You Tube. The video has gone viral and at the time of me writing the post has had over 6 million hits.
The case is of additional interest as Hillary’s father, the man beating her, is a judge dealing in family matters. Officials from the County of Aransas in Texas released a press statement that declared that “the matter is now under review by the Police Department.” However, according to Paul Callan, a criminal defence attorney, because the beatings occurred more than five years ago and a statute of limitations exists and because you cannot tell from the video whether Hillary suffered a physical injury, criminal charges for the beatings will be difficult to be brought. Moreover, it will be difficult to disbar him as an attorney if criminal charges are not brought.
But after seeing this video, how can one not concur with Hillary Adams who has said, “Judge William Adams is not fit to be anywhere near the law system”? Even if there are no charges, it seems to me outrageous that a man who has beat his daughter in a such a way will be allowed to provide judgments on other families. One way or another, Judge William Adams must be removed from the bench.
