CORPUS CHRISTI — Aransas County officials said they're pursuing criminal cases against people making threats of violence toward county offices and employees.
The threats are part of an emotionally charged public reaction to a video showing an Aransas County family law judge lashing his daughter with a belt. The video surpassed 4.3 million views on YouTube Friday, and county offices remained bogged down in hundreds of phone calls, emails and faxes — and now letters arriving in the mail.
"Some of the threats have gotten pretty bad," said Linda Garcia, executive assistant to County Judge Burt Mills. "We've got some tight security going on" at the courthouse, she said.
Garcia said she and other county employees have been threatened directly, and many of the callers are confusing Court-at-Law Judge William Adams, who is in the video and handles family law cases, with Mills, who as county judge is the highest administrator and elected official in the county.
Mills said the sheriff's office and the county attorney are working to track down the people making threats.
Garcia said one caller pretended to be a federal official with the U.S. Department of Justice and said he would come to Rockport with a group of people to investigate Adams. When she called the Justice Department to verify it was a hoax, the response she got was, "Whatever you do, don't let them in the building."
Mills said the calls have distracted county employees from doing their jobs.
County officials don't have authority to sanction Adams or remove him from the bench. The police, county attorney and district attorney essentially have closed their cases on the video because it's 7 years old and the statute of limitations has expired. Federal authorities also reviewed the video and found no federal offense, the U.S. attorney's office reported.
Adams has said he did nothing wrong besides lose his temper and issued a statement saying his daughter shared the video out of revenge because he is cutting her off financially.
If Adams receives any official punishment in response to the video, it likely will start with the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct, which took the unprecedented step of acknowledging it had launched an investigation of a sitting judge.
"It has never done that before," said Lillian Hardwick, co-author of the Handbook of Texas Lawyer and Judicial Ethics.
Adams agreed to two weeks of administrative leave after talking with the county attorney but his absence from the bench may last longer. Child Protective Services requested he not hear cases involving the agency after it began investigating Adams, agency spokesman Patrick Crimmins said.
Crimmins won't elaborate on the exact nature of that investigation, but he said the agency generally would only investigate a case in which a suspected abuse victim already has reached adulthood if there are still children in the home who could be at risk.
Adams was granted joint custody of his 10-year-old daughter in his 2007 divorce. There are no allegations against him involving his younger daughter.
The public outrage since the video's release also has been felt by lawmakers receiving requests to remove Adams from the bench and calls to extend the statute of limitations for family violence and related charges.
State Rep. Todd Hunter, whose district includes Aransas County, said his staff here and in Austin has received an influx of emails and calls about the judge.
And veteran Sen. Judith Zaffirini of Laredo, the second highest-ranking member of the Senate, posted a Facebook message describing her outrage at the video. She said she discussed it with leaders of multiple state agencies, including the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and Commission on Judicial Conduct.
"The defenders of decent society and the disciples of degeneracy often are the same people," she said, quoting novelist Caleb Carr. "Justice is demanded, along with due process."