Texas judge in video beating is back at work
Story highlights
The judge is back to work, a clerk says
William Adams handles misdemeanor cases
Daughter Hillary Adams posted the video in November 2011
It was recorded seven years earlier
CNN —A judge, who was suspended after an online video showing him beating his teenage daughter went viral, was reinstated by the Texas Supreme Court this week.
Judge William Adams was back working Wednesday at Aransas County after his suspension was lifted by the state’s high court, a court clerk said.
The state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct earlier ruled that Adams would receive a public warning for the incident, which cleared the way for the suspension to be lifted.
The move to allow the judge back on the bench angered Adams’ former wife and daughter.
“My first feeling is extreme sadness,” said Hallie Adams, the former wife. “I feel sad for the public. I see the justice system is failing and justice review system is failing.”
Hillary Adams, the judge’s daughter, was also upset.
“I’m embarrassed to live in Texas,” said the girl who was the buzz on the Internet last year after releasing the beating video.
Adams was suspended last year after the 2004 video went public. It showed him beating his then-16-year-old daughter because she downloaded online music and games.
The beating occurred when her father was punishing her for using the Internet “to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time,” Hillary Adams, wrote on the Internet posting. She said she released the video after being harassed by her father.
“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she said last November. “It wasn’t any huge happening or anything.”
She said she told her father she had the video, “and he didn’t seem to think anything of it, and basically dared me to post it.”
The video posting said, “Judge William Adams is not fit to be anywhere near the law system if he can’t even exercise fit judgment as a parent himself. Do not allow this man to ever be re-elected again. His ‘judgment’ is a giant farce. Signed, Hillary Adams, his daughter.”
The 7 1/2-minute video is punctuated by cracks of the man’s belt and the girl’s screams and cries.
At one point, the man says to his near-hysterical daughter, “What happened to you, Hillary? Once you were an obedient, nice little girl. Now you lie, cheat and steal.”
At another point, he yells at her, “You want to put some more computer games on? You want some more?”
William Adams has acknowledged that the man in the video was him.
As a judge, William Adams handles misdemeanor cases, including family-related and juvenile court issues.
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