Tattoo shop must refund, compensate school boy for tattoos

A tattoo shop owner who tattooed a primary school boy was ordered Wednesday by a local court to refund the cost and give him 20,000 yuan ($3,185) as compensation.

The boy surnamed Xu began to get tattooed in the first half of 2017 in a tattoo shop in Jiangshan, East China's Zhejiang province, when he was in sixth grade in primary school.

Xu believes tattoos are a fashion, and has tattoos on his chest, back and feet. Although he did this willingly, he was still under the age of 13 when being tattooed and did not have clear judgment toward his life, the court ruling said.

In China, people between the ages of 8 and 18 are with limited capacity for civil conduct.

The tattoo shop owner, who only gave his surname of Wu, was well aware that the boy's parents opposed tattoos, but he continued applying a huge amount of tattoos on the boy, the court ruling added.

The court said Wu should return the original cost of 1,000 yuan that Xu paid for the tattoos and pay an additional 5,000 yuan for cleaning the tattoos and another 15,000 yuan as compensation for spiritual damage.

Xu, now attending middle school, was asked by the school to clean all the exposed tattoos.

But it is hard for him to remove all the tattoos due to the huge areas covered and the pain involved in removal.

It is extremely difficult to remove the tattoos on his chest, because it might hurt his internal organs due to his young age, said the hospital.