A young woman has accused a high-profile Beverly Hills facialist of leaving her permanently scarred after a chemical peel went horribly wrong, forcing her to spend $90,000 trying to fix the damage to her face.
Victoria Nelson, now 31, shared her shocking story in a viral TikTok video that has been viewed over 5 million times. She claims celebrity esthetician Sonya Dakar, whose A-list clients include Gwyneth Paltrow, Cameron Diaz, and Drew Barrymore, used a dangerous chemical solution that burned her skin white during what was supposed to be a routine facial.
Victoria Nelson showing her face before the treatment
Nelson’s ordeal started in April 2021 when she visited Dakar’s Beverly Hills clinic for her regular facial appointment. The 26-year-old had been seeing Dakar since 2019 and trusted her completely after the esthetician successfully cleared up her acne problems.
“I was immediately enthralled,” Nelson recalled in her emotional video. “She was so intelligent and so convinced that we’d be able to clear my acne. Our sessions were a mix of skincare and therapy. I really felt like I was hanging out with my mom.”
At the end of what seemed like a regular session, Dakar suggested finishing with a chemical peel. Because Nelson had received peels from Dakar before without problems, she agreed to the treatment.
What happened next changed Nelson’s life forever. Dakar applied a mysterious liquid solution to both of Nelson’s cheeks and her forehead. Almost immediately, Nelson felt an intense burning and stinging sensation that was unlike anything she had experienced before.
“I kind of felt this immediate burning and stinging,” Nelson explained. “This definitely felt different. My eyes began watering, and I wasn’t even given eye protection.”
When Nelson complained about the severe pain, Dakar quickly rinsed off the solution and gave her a fan to cool down her face. But the damage was already done.
Nelson opened her phone’s camera to see what was happening to her face and made a shocking discovery.
“I saw what I thought looked like a white cream or white lotion, but pretty quickly realised that was actually my skin just burned,” she said in the video.
Despite Nelson’s obvious distress and the visible damage to her face, Dakar allegedly assured her that everything would be fine and that she could fix the burns within a month of treatments.
Fix the Damage
Over the next year and a half, Nelson returned to Dakar again and again, desperately hoping the esthetician could repair what she had done. She underwent 18 treatment sessions in 2021 and 12 more in 2022, including what she described as “pretty aggressive microneedling.”
None of the treatments worked. Nelson estimated she spent roughly $30,000 on treatments with Dakar alone, all while having no idea what dangerous substance had been applied to her face.
“I was feeling on the inside like I was permanently disfigured,” Nelson said.
In July 2022, Nelson finally consulted with a dermatologist during a routine skin check. The medical professional was immediately alarmed by what she saw.
The dermatologist was confused about why Dakar hadn’t immediately sent Nelson to a burn unit or plastic surgeon when the incident first occurred. She was also deeply concerned about what substance could have caused such severe damage.
The dermatologist recommended laser treatments, which cost Nelson another $8,000 over six sessions. Even after getting professional medical help, Dakar convinced Nelson to return for more treatments in January 2023, costing her approximately $10,000 more.
In total, Nelson claims she spent about $60,000 with Dakar and another $30,000 with other professionals trying to repair the damage to her face.
Nelson has since learned from multiple professionals that the liquid solution used on her face was likely medical-grade and should not have been accessible to an esthetician. The microneedling treatments Dakar performed are also outside the scope of practice for someone with her license type.
The California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology confirms that both medical-grade products and microneedling are beyond what estheticians are legally allowed to perform.
Records show this isn’t Dakar’s first run-in with regulators. In 2011, the California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology revoked her license. They placed her on three years of probation, though specific details about that case are not publicly available.
Today, Nelson still has visible marks on her face and remains very self-conscious about her appearance. Despite filing a complaint with the state board, she says there has been no resolution to her case.
“I trusted her with my face, with my skin, honestly with a lot of my innermost feelings,” Nelson said. “To feel like this person wasn’t looking out for me in the way I had hoped is just really disappointing.”
Nelson made clear that her viral video wasn’t seeking sympathy but serving as a warning to others.
“To be clear, this isn’t a woe-is-me video. It’s a ‘be warned’ video,” she concluded.
Representatives for Sonya Dakar did not respond to multiple requests for comment from PEOPLE magazine.
