A woman is suing a celebrity esthetician for a treatment that she alleges “permanently damaged” her face.
Victoria Nelson said in a TikTok posted Monday she is suing Sonya Dakar.
In partnership with the California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology Department of Consumer Affairs, Attorney General of California Rob Bonta filed a complaint against Dakar’s esthetician and establishment license over a treatment Nelson said “irreparably damaged” her face, and has cost her tens of thousands of dollars to try and fix.
In an August TikTok detailing her experience with Dakar that has garnered more than 9 million views, Nelson said Dakar “changed” her face “forever.”
“It’s a pretty scarring, literally, experience for me,” Nelson said in the TikTok.
Nelson said she started going to Dakar’s clinic in Beverly Hills in late 2019 to treat her acne and was “immediately enthralled” with Dakar.
“She was so intelligent and so convinced that we would be able to clear my acne,” Nelson said.
Dakar’s clients have included Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lawrence, Jennifer Lopez and more.
She started seeing Dakar frequently, even calling her her “LA mom,” and said her sessions with Dakar were “half skincare, half therapy.”
In April 2021 when she went in for a routine facial, Dakar suggested to Nelson that she should get a peel. Nelson agreed and said that Dakar started putting a liquid solution on her face that immediately started “burning and stinging.” Nelson said she wasn’t given eye protection, so her eyes started watering from the burning solution. Dakar rinsed the solution off and gave Nelson a fan to cool her face. When Nelson looked at herself in her phone camera, she saw what she thought was cream on her face but soon learned it was burned skin. Nelson said Dakar was insistent the burn would be fine and that she would fix it.
Nelson said she did 18 sessions in 2021 with Dakar of “pretty aggressive microneedling” to try and fix the scabbing from the burn, and 12 sessions in 2022. Nelson said she felt like she was “permanently disfigured.”
In July 2022, when Nelson went in for a routine skin check with her dermatologist, the dermatologist recommended six sessions of laser treatments, which cost Nelson $8,000.
Nelson then went back to Dakar for another 10 sessions to fix her skin, spending $10,000. Over the years, she said she spent about $60,000 with Dakar.
Since 2023, Nelson said she and Dakar have not spoken, and was advised by professionals that the liquid Dakar used on her face was “probably medical grade” or “at least” something an esthetician “shouldn’t have access to.” Nelson said microneedling also isn’t in Dakar’s scope of treatments she is allowed to do as an esthetician.
Nelson still has scars on her face, and she says she’s “self-conscious” about it.
“I trusted her with my face, with my skin, honestly, with a lot of my innermost feelings, and to feel like this person wasn’t looking out for me in the way I had hoped is just really disappointing at the end of the day,” Nelson said in a TikTok.
Dakar’s clinic did not respond to a request for comment.
The complaint filed by the attorney general of California lays out other accusations against Dakar, including that in 2008, Dakar allegedly “assaulted and attacked a board inspector,” and in 2023, Dakar was “operating an unlicensed establishment.”
In Nelson’s TikTok posted Monday, she said Dakar might be a “bad apple,” but there may be a “bigger issue” within the skincare industry.
During an episode of VH1’s reality series, “The Fabulous Life of…,” Dakar is referred to as a “skincare guru,” where Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz rave about Dakar, with Barrymore saying she doesn’t know what she would do without her.
But in 2020, two of Dakar’s former employees sued her for alleged racial, religious and sexual orientation discrimination, according to CBS News.
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