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IMO, there is a big difference between using a calmly administered spanking to teach a child the difference between right and wrong, and beating a child in anger.
The particular incident that is the focus of the OP is a video of what appears to be a very angry man beating a 16-year-old girl with a belt, so severely that, if the young woman is to be believed, she had difficulty walking the next day. Supporting her financially for several years after does not erase that, even if she appears to some to be seeking revenge for being cut off from that support.
While dependent people - children, the elderly, abused spouses - have avenues available for reporting crimes against them, they very often lack the strength to avail themselves of those avenues, and they occasionally use other means to defend themselves. The fact that the abuse is repetitive does not, in my mind, disqualify a victim from defending themselves in any one instance of abuse. The cases in which abused people attack their abusers at times when they are not facing actual abuse are more difficult, but the difficulty of their overall situation, and the desperation that they must feel in their desire to end the cycle of abuse, makes me feel that leniency towards them is a better social policy than aggressive prosecution of people who, in every other sense of the word, are victims.
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