Ataxic Cerebral Palsy

In the shocking video the man stands over young Hillary Adams, belt in hand, commanding her to “bend over the F-ing bed” or he will “spank her in the face.” What follows is a vicious lashing of the girl – who suffers from ataxic cerebral palsy –by her father, Texas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams, and her mother, Hallie.

Hillary Adams released the video this week on YouTube but it was filmed seven years ago by a 16-year-old girl who was faced with an increasing “harassment” from her father. She waited until she was no longer a minor and no longer living with Judge Adams, telling the “Today Show” this week that she wanted to make sure there was distance between her and the consequences of her actions.

“I don’t know what would’ve happened to me and my mother,” Adams said (her mother and father divorced four years ago – her mother blames her husband’s “brainwashing” for her part in the beating). She also said she told her father about the video and that he “didn’t seem to think anything of it and basically dared me to post it.”

Judge Adams has released a statement claiming his daughter released the video because he refused to continue to be her “primary source of financial support.” She allegedly told her father that if he cut her off he would live to regret it, and then the video was uploaded.

“In my mind I haven’t done anything wrong other than discipline my child after she was caught stealing, and I did lose my temper but I’ve since apologized,” Judge Adams told NBC’s “Today Show.” “It looks worse than it is.”

Regardless of the reason behind the video’s release, the reaction was an immediate explosion across practically every level of the internet. The video received 1.6 million views in a day. People have pranked Judge Adams, ordering pizzas to be sent to his home and spreading the video far and wide to garner as much attention as possible. There is even a Facebook page asking people to not vote for Judge Adams when he comes up for re-election in three years.

But while many people are calling for the Judge to step and admonishing the cruel beating there is also a segment of the population that is standing up to defend Judge Adams’s actions as a parental responsibility to discipline their children to develop character.

"I think the really powerful thing about this video is that, for a lot of people, this is child abuse, not corporal punishment, but the reality is that, under the statutory norms that exist in our society, this would not qualify as a crime or child abuse in any state in the country," says David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Spanking is not the same as in the past. The use of belts and switches has decreased but instances of open-hand spanking persist today. In a recent Southern Methodist University study 37 north Texas parents were filmed and in a 36-hour period nearly all of them hit or swatted their child. Surely that study would be different if the parents in question were from northern New Jersey. Or would it?

What the video of Judge Adams shows is the textbook definition of a spanking – not the amount of pain delivered but the submission to the will of the parent. This is the point of the punishment. The video raises two important questions:

1) Does corporal punishment have a place in raising a child? One has to wonder exactly what kinds of lessons are being construed by the child, if any at all.

2) Are Judge Adams actions justifiable or do they cross the line between punishment and child abuse? And just where does punishment cross over from something character-building to something far more dangerous?

How do you maintain discipline in your home? Have you used spanking to teach your children respect or do you find that notion outdated and unsafe – something no parent should ever consider (especially now that we know our kids might film it and put it on the internet)?