Mom Arrested After Giving 11-Year-Old Daughter Tattoo

A North Carolina woman has been arrested for giving her pre-teen daughter a tattoo. Thirty-year-old Odessa Clay said her 11-year-old daughter wanted to be inked.

“She asked me to do it,” she said. She also said she thought minors could get tattoos as long as they had a parent’s permission.

Clay, who sells Mary Kay products and says she is an “independent beauty consultant,” said she used her own tattoo equipment and numbed her daughter’s arm before outlining a small heart on the girl’s right shoulder. She said she did not fill the tattoo in and that her daughter was not in any pain.

Clay gave her daughter the tattoo last year but wasn’t arrested until late September. She says she believes a former in-law went to the police and told them about the girl’s tattoo as retaliation for a police report Clay filed against her daughter’s paternal grandfather. She is charged with a single count of tattooing a person under the age of 18 and is due in court next month.

“I feel she oughta be charged with child abuse,” Pamlico County Sheriff Bill Sawyer Jr. said. “She scarred her child for life.” Clay was arrested in Pamlico County — where she lives — but was charged in Craven County where she gave her daughter the tattoo.

The maximum penalty Clay faces is 60 days in jail and a $1,000 fine, but District Attorney Scott Thomas said the prosecution is consulting Craven County police to determine if additional charges will be filed.

Odessa Clay’s criminal record includes charges of possession of drug paraphernalia and stolen goods as well as larceny.