HIV slur is set to ruin me
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Owner Mike Prentice's business is suffering
EXCLUSIVE
by Lynn Cox
A tattooist fears his business could be ruined by a smear campaign wrongly accusing his studio of infecting more than 100 people with HIV.
Worried customers of Rochester’s Andy Jay Tattoo Studios have been rushing for emergency tests at Medway Maritime Hospital as malicious rumours spread like wildfire across the Towns.
Owner Mike Prentice said trade has already begun to suffer, with people boycotting his High Street business all week.
It is not clear who started the rumours, but they appear to have begun on social networking site Facebook with claims someone working at the studio had been jailed for 10 years for infecting 102 people with HIV.
Frantic customers have prompted environmental health officers at Medway Council to issue a reassurance the rumours are false.
Mr Prentice, 49, said: “It was a complete shock, but before I knew it the phone was ringing non-stop – it was like a nightmare.
“I’m really gutted about it. The studio is a family-run business and no one has ever been infected with anything by having a tattoo done here. These silly rumours could ruin the business.
“One day this week we had no one in, but the phone was ringing non stop and all people wanted to know was had people been infected.
“One customer even came in saying she’d been for a test at the hospital. I couldn’t believe it.
"The rumours are rubbish, no one has anything to worry about.”
The studio can trace its roots back to the town for more than 65 years and used to be run by Mr Prentices’s father-in-law, Andy Jeanes.
"These silly rumours could ruin the business” – Mike Prentice
Mr Prentice, who has been a tattooist since 1975 and whose family helped set up the industry hygeine code, has run the business with 42-year-old wife Karen since Andy retired last September.
He said: “I want to put everyone’s mind at rest and get the message across that it is safe to come here for a tattoo or piercing – you will not get infected and no one ever has.
“This whole thing has been a nightmare and I would like to put an end to it now.”
A Medway Council spokesman refused to comment to the Messenger, but customer service staff were freely issuing the denial to customers.
One told a Messenger reporter posing as a customer: “The rumours are competely untrue.
"We are investigating how they started, but it is safe to go to this tattooist.”
and was of course reported to Environmental Health. The "story" got out but not the facts......and rumours were spread on FB etc that it was actually found at chinese restaurant.....and the poor owner was subjected to all sorts of vandalism and abuse.