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Hi everyone,

Last night on our newscast, we ran the horrifying story of the 16 year old disabled girl in Texas, savagely whipped by her father with a belt. Her father: a judge who presides over child abuse cases.

We first saw the footage on YouTube Tuesday night. To be honest, it was the hardest footage I had watched in a long time. I had to turn away it was so brutal. My heart broke for that girl. Knowing she had waited 7 years to post it online, meant she had harboured this dark family secret and finally hit the send button to liberate herself from her own past.

That first night, the judge was already public enemy number one on the Internet but the footage had not reached conventional television.

By Wednesday night, the video had received so much attention online that hundreds of people called into the clerk's office generating a police investigation and a suspension.

The judge, when confronted by reporters, said "it's not as bad as it looks" -- and felt he had done nothing wrong. Really?

We debated the importance of this story, whether the harsh footage pushed the boundaries too far.

Was exposing an authority figure, who sits in judgment of others, worth the risk of making viewers uncomfortable?

The truth is, we debate footage all the time. A couple of weeks ago it was the execution of Moammar Gaddhafi, the week before that, the senseless shooting of 56 exotic animals in Ohio, next week it will be something else.

We don't always get it right but we always analyze our motivation for running a story. One of the reasons in this case, we believe it empowers and gives voice to abuse victims.

This extreme example is an important reminder that authority figures are human and therefore flawed and we as a society are required to question actions and expose bad behaviour.

I have received a great deal of emails from those, both angry that we ran the story and those thanking us for not sugarcoating child abuse.

This viewer has agreed to allow us to post her letter as long as we did not identify her. She wrote to me:

Ms. LaFlamme,

I woke up today thinking about a story I saw on your show last night. The footage of the judge savagely beating his daughter will haunt me for a long time. I cringed watching but forced myself to keep watching. That kind of evil needs to be seen. Just because it makes us uncomfortable doesn't mean we should sugarcoat so I'm glad you didn't. I didn't see that on CBC or anywhere so thank you to you and CTV for showing that. Maybe the shock of it will wake people up to what goes on in people's homes where kids are abused.

The most vulnerable of our society rarely have a voice. Again, it took this victim, 7 years to expose her father.

Many of you weighed in on our website and our Facebook. Many of you used similar words to describe what you saw: "Vicious" … "sickening" seemed to be repeated most often.

"This went on for 7 minutes??" said Mark on CTVNews.ca. "1:30 was all I needed to see, and I couldn't watch the rest."

On our Facebook page, Hollie Holden wrote: "… that's not corporal punishment, that is downright evil, vicious, violence against a defenseless child. Corporal punshiment is not the answer."

Jackie Psarianos says she thinks the parents "need help with their anger management." And that "If the computer was the issue then why was it in the girl's room? The computer should be [in a] centrally located area, allowing proper monitoring. If children are a burden then do not have them."

We showed 30 seconds of the beating, was it too much? I would like to know what you think as our newsroom debate continues.

See you tonight,

Lisa