'Dora the Explorer' actress got her friend expelled for vaping, lawsuit says
The voice of Dora the Explorer was caught vaping in the girl’s room with a friend last December, court papers show.
A New York City private school suspended her for three days, the New York Daily News reported, while her friend was expelled entirely. And now the friend’s parents are suing.
The papers allege that 15-year-old Fatima Ptacek, who plays Dora on the Nickelodeon animated show, convinced a younger friend to try a water vaporizer pipe in the bathroom of Avenues The World School, according to the Daily News.
"At first, we didn't know how to turn it on, but then we figured it out," Ptacek said, as quoted in papers reviewed by the Daily News.
"We both sucked in from the vaporizer, but I was a little scared, so I didn't inhale into my lungs but kept it in my mouth.”
The pipe did not contain any drugs or tobacco, the Daily News noted.
Frederik Sundwall and Nadia Leonelli said their 14-year-old daughter, Ptacek and one other girl were vaping caramel-flavored water then a senior ratted on them.
However only their daughter, referred to as "M.S." in the papers, was expelled. The third girl received no punishment.
Now they’re suing Avenues The World School, which opened four years ago in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood and charges more than $40,000 per year for tuition.
Sundwall and Leonelli argued that the school haphazardly dolled out its punishments, violating the school’s own policies.
"The fact that F.P. is a known actress for being the voice of Dora Explorer may have played a role in why she was ultimately not expelled even after the school threatened as much, and M.S. was expelled instead as a scapegoat," says the lawsuit, according to the Associated Press.
The daughter now attends another private school, the Daily News reported, but the parents want their girl’s punishment voided, along with unspecified monetary damages and her re-enrollment at the school.
The school declined to comment on specifics of the case, and Ptacek didn’t respond to the Daily News' request for comment.
[h/t the Daily News]