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Pamlico County Sheriff handout
Odessa Clay is accused of tattooing her 11-year-old daughter.
A North Carolina woman is in trouble with the law for tattooing her 11-year-old daughter, according to a published report.
Odessa Clay, 30, of Grantsboro in Pamlico County has been charged with one count of tattooing a person under age 18, WCTI-TV reported.
In North Carolina, it’s illegal to tattoo a minor.
Clay was arrested and charged in late September after police in Havelock, where she used to live, found out she gave her daughter a small, heart-shaped tattoo near her right shoulder, according to WCTI. Clay, who herself is heavily tattooed, said she used her own tools.
"She asked me to do it," Clay told WCTI.
Related video: Tattooed 10-year-old removed from grandfather’s care
Clay said she numbed her daughter's arm for the procedure and her daughter was never in pain.
Clay said she did not know that tattooing a minor is illegal. She told WCRI that she believes a former in-law reported the tattoo.
She is due in court next month.
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Leave a Comment:
Way over the line with this law. Parents consent not the government. This is why lawyers are necessary, I'd fight this law and who ever is behind it for as long as it took.
Just because someone has enough brain function to be able to spread their legs, does not magically grant them powers to whatever they feel like to a child. Unless you're equating children to property that is.
Just because people don't fall in lock step with your overwhelming intelligence does not mean you may force them to do so.
Chances are there is more to this story than has been told. Maybe this is not the first time this mother has had a total lack of judgment and character and she crossed the line too many times and they are using this as a stop point.
Chances are she's the queen of England as well. I am commenting on the article in print and my view on what a government should not be into. Please note I personally am against tattoos on anyone of any age it is the law in general that has me fired up.
I understand your comment and if that were the case she should be charged for those improprieties.
What did she use to numb the area where she did the tattoo? Is she a doctor? How do you get medications to numb the skin unless you're a doctor?
how? easy internet.. the web can giveS u anything u want..
To answer your question, it doesn't say what she used but I know there are some things that numb that anyone can get. For example, Numzit (if it's still around, I believe it's to numb baby's gums when they're teething), ice, maybe chloraseptic (numbs a sore throat), those things or others might also numb the skin.
this article makes u realize that everyone has their own opinion and their own way on raising their child... in my opinion i think this is wrong but who am i to say is wrong is just my opinion i belive that an 11 year old is too young to decide what he wants on his or her body. mommy not making sure that the needle is steril is just awful. she could off gotten an infection or even worse an transmitted disease. did she make sure this was sterilize.. i dont agree in lilttle kids getting tattoed. thats just me. is like pople feel ofended in school giving away condoms.. i don tthink this mom should get arrested how ever she should get a warning.
Good point. You notice my very harsh post earlier toward this law. I also have six (4 grown and two almost grown) wonderful children all of whom have been prohibited from getting a tattoo at sometime in their lives. I am very much against MY children with tattoos or adults that I have a say in their personal lives. I can also recognize an overly done legislation.
As a kid, many, many decades ago, I used to buy the 5c tattoos we applied to our arms with water. Considering how long a ten-year-olds interest in anything lasts, wouldn't that have been enough?
This certainly should not be a legal issue but rather one of just common sense and good taste. The likelihood of the mother having either is highly remote.
I've heard of "tramp stamps" but "goober stamps?" Poor kid.
I suppose she asked you to be a class A moron, too.
I suspect Santa will be leaving this young lady a crack pipe, a fully loaded stolen handgun and a "I'm with stupid" t-shirt under the tree this year.
Wow - a little bit over the top. She wanted a tattoo because mom has them. So, to mollify the daughter, she now has a little one. Suggesting a crack smoking, gun thief wearing a "stupid" t-shirt ~ take a breath, Mr. Troll. Quite the extrapolation you have going on.
Over the top? Perhaps for someone that has honed the inability to recognize sarcasm and has a sense of humor that rivals that off a common field mouse.
I'll try to slow this down, so please try to keep up.
A strong dose of sarcasm that reflects the stupidity of the decision made by the mother.
More sarcasm that theorizes (based on siginificant supporting factual evidence) that the mother is stupid enough to provide her child with anything she asks for. For someone that stills believes in Santa Claus and the veracity of the WWE, I could see where a short-sighted, knee-jerk assumption could be made here.
Next time, please take a moment to read (or have someone read it to you) comments completely and repeatedly before strapping your dunce cap on and sitting down at the keyboard.
This is just crazy, this is the women's own child. She didn't tatttoo a stranger. What ever happened to parental rights? Its time to putting on your thinking caps men and women of Southern Carolina. What you do with your children (that is not going to harm their self images) should still be between the parent and the child. The 11 year old asked her mother for the tattoo, a small heart-not a full body tattoo of bieber. Give them a break.
TROUBLED CITIZEN, Plain and simple you are a DITZ and a dumb ass!!! You have no morality and character based on you comment.
Should a parent be free to beat their children ?
My god. And where is it LEGAL to tattoo a minor???!
Stupid is what stupid does. There are way too many stupid people in this world and this woman is a classic example why people need a certificate to breed!!! This woman has raised a daughter who will also go down the tube. Actually anyone with any tattoos should be tared and feathered in public. All these people are of low IQ and social psychopaths . You have a tattoo, you are trash in my mind and someone who deserves all the bad things the life has to offer you.
Anyone who makes broad generalizations about someone's mental state based on aesthetic choices is an arrogant jerk that I wouldn't pollute my trash can with.
And no, I don't have any tattoos. I just think you are an idiot if you think that about all people with tattoos.
Wow, you really need to get some mental help and actually look at the world. A lot of the people who take charge and create things for our advancement, some of those people have tattoos. There are nurses, doctors, lawyers, scientists, researchers, etc., who have tattoos. The only people who give tattoos a bad name are idiots like you who are not educated and those who do it to intimidate people. I work at a hospital. Does that make me a bad person? No. I have one tattoo that is a symbol of the close relationship I had of a friend who was killed last year in a car accident. Does that make me a bad person? In your eyes, yes. But in reality I am not bad for getting something that means 10 years of closeness with someone who bent over backwards to help me when I needed help and vice versa for him. So before you open your mouth and show that you have no education as to why many people get tattoos, stop to think that most of the people you rely on to make sure you are healthy (anyone in the medical profession) or someone in your family just might have a tattoo that has a special meaning.
Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's not stupid. Maybe the mother should have "dumb bitch" tatooed across her forehead. Why not? What if the kid really wants "slut" tatooed across her forehead. I mean, really, really wants it? Where do you draw the line..no pun intended??
when i was 11, i wanted to dye my hair blonde . my mom, being older, and wiser, said no, untill i was 16.. when i was 16, i didnt want blonde hair, anymore.i didnt want to ruin my hair.... glad my mom was the wise one.. kids dont make good decisions, thats why they are the kids.. and the parents are supposed to make good decisions for the kids. this mom didnt..
Something like this might be expected in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia and Mao's China, but not here in America. Who exactly is hurt by this? What happened to freedom of expression, as provided by the First Amendment?
Yet despite the obvious, Repugnicans seldom seem to come forth to defend people's liberties -- except in cases like carrying guns openly in public and ranting profanely about anything they don't like.
Good gravy - all kinds of folks gotta calm down; give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile. Have the tattoo lasered off at the mom's expense then and call it a day.
I told my kids they had to wait until 18. Two of them have tattoos, two do not. Tattoos are no longer on the bodies of bikers and military; nor is the stigma out there.
God gives this woman a beautiful face and body and she screws it up and then she goes and screws her daughters body. This woman has just given her body and soul along with her child to the SATAN. Her punishment is coming!!!!
My daughter, who is 6, has been asking me for a tattoo for months. No, I do not have any tattoos nor do any of her relatives, but I guess she saw someone down the street who had them and she liked them. I find it outrageous that someone like this woman would have agreed to tattoo someone as young as my daughter, I mean, she sees nothing wrong with an 11-year-old getting a tattoo so I guess 6 would also be okay. Where do you draw the line? What if the kid wants her face and neck tattooed? Do you say yes to that too, knowing kids cannot make mature, critical decisions for themselves?
Look, I have nothing against tattoos and have dated guys who had them...I don't judge someone as being "unworthy" or "trashy" because of tattoos, but most of the guys DID regret a tattoo or 2, or 3 of the ones they had, and these were guys who had them done at 18+ years of age, too. I think that 18 is a reasonable time period, as kids are somewhat mature at that age. I would definitely not want to agree to a tattoo if my child is under 16, that is probably the bare minimum age.
People's minds change, and yes, you CAN regret a tattoo or find it stupid later on in life. Some years ago, a guy I dated had the name of his ex-wife and a tattoo of her nude torso on his leg as well. He never expected their marriage to end at the time but when it did, he hated the tats because they were constant reminders for him, and some of the women he had dated in the past were angry, offended and jealous about it. He was uncomfortable when people would ask him about the half-naked woman on his leg. Then you have people like Johnny Depp who tattooed Winona's name on his body and had to have it modified.
Yes, putting someone's name on your body in permanent ink can be stupid, you may say, but what if you like Mickey Mouse now as a kid? Don't you think there is a possibility that you might be embarrassed to have a Mickey Mouse tattoo at the age of 50? Or a Justin Bieber tattoo?
If you make it to 50 with your biggest regret or embarassment from your youth being a mickey mouse tattoo, you're either a) incredibly lucky or b) lack the self-awareness to truly process your youth.
Sure, you can regret tattoos. But it's not the government's job to interpose itself between parents and every possible childhood regret.
.
Are there any states that it's LEGAL???
Pirate America. Man, I can't go anywhere without seeing some damn pirate walking around like his or her stupid tattoos displayed for all of us to see and go: "Wow, great tattoo! What did you go through to inspire something so beautiful!" or "Man, Greg used to be a computer geek but now he has that tattoo on his neck and arms; He is scary!" /s/. What tools.
Being N.C. the tattoo was probably the name of the mother's boyfriend.
All of you on here who just can't have enough government intervention into the private lives of others, and who shout "arrest the parent" for just about everything: You are going to find yourself on the wrong end of "justice" sooner or later for something your child has done--or something you did or didn't do for the child. I realize that you lack the imagination and foresight to recognize the truth, but, hey--try. Not long ago, you pointed your wart-riddled fingers and lighted your torches when a NJ mother was arrested and charged with child endangerment (she will have an arrest record for life) because her precious kid had had ONE sunburn. And BTW, simply because some laws that override parental power are justified does not mean that any and every such law is justified. (Do you believe that because two aspirin ease your headaches that two hundred simply must be better?) Your howls of "What about allowing her kid to drink and drive, huh? What about that?" are stupid and illogical--like you. This is a public health issue; discourage this behavior all you wish, but bringing cops and prosecutors into the picture for every parental action that offends your puny, closed minds is not the best answer.
Lets hang her!!
So in this country it is legal to abort your child but illegal to give them a tattoo. Land of the free my ass!
Just stop for a second and weigh the harm here against the costs of the arrest, prosecution, and punishment of the mother at issue.
On the one hand you have an 11 year old girl who, when she's 20 years old, will have random people point out this small misshapen heart-like tattoo on her back and she'll have to say "well, it seemed like a good idea when I was 11." I have a pretty good scar on my forehead that I say pretty much the same thing about when people ask about, but the story involves a bike, an empty lot, and a ramp.
On the other hand, you have the salaries of the CPS investigators who took this report and spent time investigating (instead of looking in to, say, allegations of child sexual abuse at another location). You have the cops who arrested her, rather than, say, busting speeders and drunks on the highway. You have a prosecutor spending time filing documents, as well as, I'm guessing, a public defender answering. You'll have her time in county lock-up, and her daughter's likely time in the foster care system, which in most states infamous for it's wanting oversight and potential for abuse.
So ask yourself: Is it worth it?
I think the fear here is the mother might have her looking just like a carbon copy in a couple years time. No 11 year old is cabable of making that kind of decision. Maybe Mom could get an age progression photo of what those tatts are going to look like, show them to her daughter, and then ask her is she still thinks it is a good idea.
So? Is her appearance really that big of a concern to the state? Does preventing her from being all tattooed up at 30, with some that look weird due to growth, really warrant the state spending 10s of thousands of dollars on this prosecution?
We generally accept the proposition that parents are the primary arbiter of what's best for their children, absent proof of some significant concrete harm, usually physical harm. I fail to see how a small tattoo that will look funny 10 years from now rises to the level significant harm.
As to her being a carbon copy of her mom, isn't that sort of what we all hope for from our children? Very religious parents hope their children reflect their values at 30, and are allowed to send their children to all kind of religious camps that propagate those standards, regardless of whether the general public looks askance at those values and appearance standards. Have you seen Mitt Romney's children? They all look very much like him. Are you really willing to pass a legal referrendum on this woman's life that says she cannot expect her children to value the same things she values and her aesthetic standards?
There's no law against piercings, if one has parental permission, correct? People have said, yeah, but piercings can grow back, that's the difference.... Except these days, alot of times the piercings are actually large disks that permanently "disfigure" the ear, so that wouldn't really hold true. This is a hard one... On the one hand, it's a small heart near her shoulder, not a landscape across her back, or a tramp stamp or anything. A little heart, made by her mother. Think of the resources being wasted on this! Why isn't a "warning" sufficient, where the police visit her house, tell her of the law and that due to the size/character and singularity of this tattoo, the prosecutor isn't pursuing, but that if it is heard that another tattoo has been done, she'll be prosecuted? Just seems like this isn't worth more in public dollars than the cost of a home visit by a lecturing police officer to me....