Texas police Wednesday launched an investigation after a secretly-filmed video of judge William Adams brutally beating his 16-year-old daughter, Hillary Adams, with a leather belt had gone viral online on YouTube.

The video posted on YouTube runs approximately for eight minutes and has watched for more than 950,000 times since it was uploaded.

The video, which was secretly-filmed in 2004, was posted on Reddit in October by Hillary to take revenge on her father.

Police Chief Tim Jayroe said that they had launched an investigation after the video appeared online.

After watching the video, Adams told KRIS TV in Corpus Christi that he was the man in the video. 'It happened years ago. I apologized. It's not as bad as it looks on tape,' Adams said.

The video, titled 'Family law judge beats own daughter for using the Internet, please spread,' shows Adams and his wife verbally abusing their daughter just for playing games and downloading music to the computer. Apparently, Hillary, who has a passion for technology, had illegally downloaded the video game and the songs.

In the video, Adams is seen ordering his daughter to lie down on the bed. He repeatedly beats the girl with his belt. When he gives ten powerful strikes on her legs, his wife takes the belt form him to beat her and Adams leaves the room. He comes back a minute later with another leather belt to continue to beat her.

Hillary is said to have suffered from ataxic cerebral palsy since birth. Ataxic cerebral palsy causes problems of balance, shaky movements of hands or feet, and difficulty with speech.

There is also a Facebook page entitled 'Don't Re-Elect Judge William Adams' which was set up Tuesday and has more than 18,000 followers.

In an interview with KRIS, Hillary said: It had happened before, and had been escalating. I set up a camera, and I caught it. She also said that she had uploaded the video after a vicious argument with her father over the phone.

She told a local TV network: '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.'

But later Hillary tweeted that she was sorry for posing the video on YouTube.

Wednesday afternoon, she tweeted: 'I'm feeling some regret for publishing the video because to ruin my own father is heavy indeed. But I really want him to seek help.'

She also tweeted: I'm not sure how much I should say, except that above all we need to help my father instead of condemning him.

Please spread the word that my father needs professional help and not hatred. We can offer him the tools to be a better person.

'It is my wish that people stop threatening my father and start offering professional help. That is what he really needs,' she said.

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