That new viral video showing an angry father spanking the bare bottom of an adult man who allegedly consorted with his underage daughter just has to have been staged, right? It was guerilla theater tailored to yield maximum YouTube views, blog posts, and morning zoo chatter, right?

Wrong.

The 2:49 video, seen above, was filmed about six years ago outside the Salt Lake City home of James Jessee, who was spanked while lying face down in his front yard. Jessee apparently consented to the spanking after the girl’s father assured him, “I’m not gonna kick ya, punch ya, do anything but spank your ass. That is it. And it’ll be the end of it.”

That promise of limited violence was delivered by Robert Pruhs, who lived a few miles away from Jessee with his wife Katie and daughter Kelsi, a striking six-foot-tall blonde who was 16 at the time.

Pruhs, who died last year at age 49, delivered 21 loud slaps to Jessee’s rear. The spanking ended after Jessee yelled, “Fuck, Robert, stop dude!” He added, “I ain’t even gonna be able to sit, dude.”

Pruhs indicated that Jessee wasn’t the only one to feel his wrath. “Well, that’s what Kelsi got,” he said, adding, on the bright side, that the spanking was “better than an ass kicking.” As he departed Jessee’s home, Pruhs said, “So consider yourself lucky, James. You coulda had rape charges plus an ass kicking.”

Jessee, now 33, is pictured in the above mug shot. In his post-spanking years, Jessee has been busted on a variety of drug charges and is currently serving a felony probation term. His most recent felony collar came in January.

The Pruhs-Jessee encounter was videotaped by Rassule Khatibi, who this week placed the clip on YouTube and Break.com (and sought to gin up traffic to the video through a barrage of Twitter messages to media outlets and public figures like Howard Stern and ultimare fighter Chuck Liddell).

Khatibi, 32, is one of Katie Pruhs’s two children from a prior marriage. Carrying a camcorder, he accompanied his stepfather to the home of Jessee (who happened to be a longtime friend of Khatibi’s).

In a description uploaded to YouTube, Khatibi wrote, “Angry father gives his underage daughters adult boyfriend an option of either a severe ass kicking or a brutal spanking. He opted for the spanking. That's what you get for ‘puttin it’ to an underage girl.”

Khatibi told TSG that Pruhs (picured at left) later pushed him to put the clip online, but he explained that he had misplaced the video. It was not until after Pruhs’s death that he found the video and decided that posting it would be a “perfect way to remember” his late stepfather.

Recalling the spanking, Khatibi said that Pruhs first wanted to go straight to Jessee’s house and “kick his ass,” but “my mom talked him into treating [Jessee] like a kid by spanking him.” He added that Jessee’s mother agreed that the spanking would be appropriate, and helped set a date for the punishment.

Asked why his stepfather did not opt to contact law enforcement about the relationship between Jessee and the teenager, Khatibi said he could never “picture him calling the police,” adding that Pruhs opted to “handle it ourselves.”

In an interview today, Katie Pruhs laughed while discussing the spanking incident, which she termed the “tip of the iceberg” when it came to Robert’s bid to shield his only daughter from unwanted--at least by him--male suitors.

Pruhs, who divorced Robert several years ago, recalled that he learned about his teen daughter “messing around” with Jessee, and decided to literally take matters into his own hand. She added that he told Khatibi, “Bring your video camera, I’m gonna give James a spanking.”

Pruhs said that she had expected the resulting video--which family members viewed--to remain “hush-hush.” But then her son called this week to report he put it online.

Pruhs recalled a second incident in which Robert, who worked in landscaping, confronted a young man who kissed and told after making out with his stepdaughter at a Mormon Church camp. That payback included a punch being thrown at the fellow and bricks being tossed through his home windows.

Asked if Robert would enjoy knowing that his spanking of Jessee was now public, Katie replied, “I think he would love it.” She added that he was a “great dad” who believed that his daughter “could do no wrong.”