YouTube video of judge beating disabled daughter goes viral, sparks inquiry (VIDEO)

A harrowing YouTube video of a Texas family court judge lashing his teenage daughter with a belt while she screams for him to stop, has drawn outrage and prompted an official investigation by a Texas judicial panel.  

Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams is shown in the 2004 video of him hitting his then 16-year-old daughter, Hillary Adams, reportedly a cerebral palsy sufferer, with a belt while swearing and telling her he's going to "beat you into submission."

In the video, the girl's mother can also be heard telling to behave "like a 16-year-old," "turn over" and "take it like a grown woman."

Adams, now 23, covertly filmed the incident — supposed punishment for downloading material from the internet onto the family computer — and told NBC's "Today" program that the beating was not a one-off and "did happen regularly for a period of time."

The 8-minute video had been watched nearly 2 million times by Thursday morning.

Here's the YouTube video: warning, graphic content

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The State Commission on Judicial Conduct, meanwhile, said Thursday that it had "commenced an investigation" into the conduct of Judge Adams, who according to CBS handles child abuse cases. 

Adams, who has reportedly received death threats over the video, canceled hearings on Thursday and was seen packing his truck with belongings and rifles, the Christian Science Monitor reports. 

Adams has said on camera that he had not done anything wrong, and released a statement reported by CNN claiming that his daughter, now 23, posted the video online after he warned he might reduce financial support to her.

The beating depicted in the video "looks worse than it is," he said.

"In my mind, I haven't done anything wrong other than discipline my child after she was caught stealing," Adams said. "And I did lose my temper, but I've since apologized."

According to the statement by released by Adams’ attorney, William A. Dudley, Hillary Adams told the judge this year that if he "reduced her financial support, and took away her Mercedes automobile, which her father had provided, he would live to regret it. The post was then uploaded."

“If the public must know, just prior to the YouTube upload, a concerned father shared with his 23-year-old daughter that he was unwilling to continue to work hard and be her primary source of financial support, if she was going to simply ‘drop out’ [from college] and strive to achieve no more in life than to work part time at a video-game store,” the statement reads.

Hillary Adams, meanwhile, told The Associated Press outside her mother's home in the Gulf Coast town of Portland, near Corpus Christi that:

"I'm experiencing some regret because I just pulled the covers off my own father's misbehavior after so many people thought he was such a good person…

"But so many people are also telling me I did the right thing. He's supposed to be a judge who exercises fit judgment."

"I just think he really needs help and rehabilitation," Hillary Adams said on NBC's "Today" Thursday. "We need to get him counseling or something."