This story contains descriptions of child abuse.
A man identifying himself as Sage on Twitter shared a graphic video on Tuesday afternoon showing a man beating his daughter for being sexually active.
“Your daughter fucking at 12 wyd?” Sage wrote in the caption to the 37-second video. The video remained posted for at least six hours, but it was no longer accessible by Wednesday morning.
The video appears to have been taken from an Instagram account, though the name of the account isn’t clear.
It shows a man in a white shirt beating a young girl in a pink t-shirt in a room with a white bed and pink rug.
The man, who was not identifiable through the pixelated video, is seen beating the girl with a belt.
“You fucking around huh?” he screams while she cries.
“No, no,” she screams repeatedly while he beats her to the floor and continues the beating.
He is seen throwing her around the floor and pushing her to the floor.
“You wanna be a hoe? Huh? Huh? You wanna be a hoe?” he asks, brandishing his belt from time to time, while she screams “no.”
In the hours that it was up, the video garnered more than 11,000 retweets and more than 2 million views.
Many users pointed out that this shouldn’t be a way of responding to an adolescent being sexually active, and this behavior is abuse.
Shouldn’t no man be beating his daughter lets start there. You’re horrible for sharing this. When they lock him up I wont be feeling sorry.
— Andé Karim (@_AndeKarim) July 17, 2019
I hope he lose custody and access to her. I’d report him to the authorities if I knew who he was. If a child is having sex at 12 no amount of physical violence is going to repair that. Y’all in these comments should skip parenthood
— Palate Architect (@ginandtectonica) July 16, 2019
Beating children is abuse. Having sex in itself is not bad. She needs reinforcement of sex education (she should have received it before 12), a kind adult to make sure she is not being coerced, and a scientific explanation on why sex at 12 is risky & distracting.
— Asia (@AsiaChloeBrown) July 16, 2019
This is sickening. He needs prison time and so does the person recording. God bless this girl. I can only imagine what other abuse she encounters day to day. My heart hurts to see this
— Linny (@linnylouwhooo) July 16, 2019
“He’s inflicting so much pain on his own child, she’ll only distance herself away from him,” one user wrote. “And the fact that this has to be recorded is so horrendous, this abuse won’t revert what she did. It’s better to communicate with your child and educate them. It’s so sad to see this.”
https://twitter.com/officialmelldn/status/1151436258671046658?s=20
The conversations also showed how common this kind of behavior and thinking is and how violence can affect young people.
People say beating/strict makes you sneak more but thats 100% on the kids personality . I didn’t even think about trying something after a beating like that.
— JR (@nedstarkpls) July 16, 2019
https://twitter.com/alexis_blessed/status/1151210182938103809?s=20
so weird child abuse is so normalized that there’s actual people in the replies defending it as “discipline” because they were abused themselves pic.twitter.com/cZv4IvURpH
— not lindsay lohan (@drugproblem) July 16, 2019
Even after the video was taken down, Sage’s follow-up tweets remained, where he stood by his original caption. A disheartening number of people supported his commentary, giving a glimpse into how many parents still think it’s OK to beat up your child about sex instead of talking to them in healthy ways.
https://twitter.com/Reese__major/status/1151409013940207617?s=20
https://twitter.com/AliciaMolette/status/1151392089608982528?s=20
“So if the child needs an injection to get well, so it is abuse to allow the doctor or nurse inject her with the drug she needs to get well?” wrote one user, defending the actions of the father in the video.
“Yes if it was my son I’m having the same fucking energy it’s hella diseases out here so foh with that in my mentions,” Sage wrote in a follow-up tweet.
It’s not clear if the video showed Sage himself or someone else. Sage did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comments. Most of the content on his Twitter account appears to be aggregated.
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