Pleasure has a dark side, at least according to prosecutors.
The glamorous founder of the OneTaste “sexual wellness” empire, Nicole Daedone, 56, and its former CEO Rachel Cherwitz, 43, will go on trial next year, accused of running a cult that forced workers to have sex sexual relations and their followers to go into debt. .
The duo appeared in federal court in Brooklyn on Thursday, trailed by a glamorous entourage and represented by $1,000-an-hour lawyers, to be told that their criminal trial on charges of directing a forced labor conspiracy will proceed. completed in 2025 and is likely to be extended. take a month.
They could face years in prison if convicted of the charges, and are also being sued in Manhattan federal court by a former worker who accuses them of sex trafficking her to gain OneTaste clients.
It’s a precipitous fall for Daedone, who was once given a spot on the TedX Talks stage for a breathless 15-minute talk about “the female orgasm” and was with Gwyneth Paltrow.
Paltrow’s Goop website talked about OneTaste, which was also backed by Khloe Kardashian and grossed $12 million a year, according to court documents.
Daedone (second right) was with Paltrow (left) at a Goop health event in 2017, when OneTaste reached the peak of its commercial success with its claim that 15 minutes of “orgasmic meditation” would change women’s lives . John Salangsang / BFA / Shutterstock Daedone racked up YouTube views with a TedX talk on “Orgasm: The Cure for Hunger,” in which he boosted his claims about the female orgasm, boosting his OneTaste business in the process . TED
Under the guise of “sexual wellness,” OneTaste built an empire capitalizing on the female orgasm through its “orgasmic meditation” (“OM”).
Daedone recorded the technique, which involved a woman stripping from the waist down and then lying on a “nest of pillows” to have her genitals fondled, usually by a man wearing a latex glove for exactly 15 minutes. Daedone claimed that he learned it from a Buddhist monk.
But allegations of rape, sexual abuse and manipulation sparked an FBI investigation that began in November 2018 and led to his arrest in June 2023.
Now prosecutors accuse Daedone and Cherwitz of preying on vulnerable consumers by promoting their company as helping to heal sexual trauma and then forcing its members into debt to pay for their courses.
OneTaste charged thousands of dollars for followers to learn their techniques. Men were taught how to stare at a woman’s genitals and then caress them for exactly 15 minutes, while women were taught how to be caressed. Courtesy of Netflix
And he is accused of withholding wages from employees and subjecting them to “economic, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse, surveillance, indoctrination and intimidation.”
Since the FBI investigation began, OneTaste and the women have spent $15 million in legal fees and sued Netflix, the BBC and a former member.
Her attorneys from white shoe firms Alston & Bird and Steptoe filed a motion to dismiss the case in January on which Diane Gujarati has yet to rule.
OneTaste was founded in 2004 in San Francisco by Daedone and offers hands-on “OM” classes as “a way to make orgasm, connection, and sensuality sustainable.”
Daedone spread his techniques across the country as OneTaste expanded, but prosecutors say he hid a monstrous reality: workers exploited for their jobs and forced to have sex for sales. In 2009, The Post attended one of his “intimacy” classes with instructor Justin Dawson. Victoria Will/New York Post
It boasted that “OM” was “Beyond Tantra: Sexuality in the Post-New Age” and offered practical orgasm “training” courses for thousands of dollars.
In 2011, Daedone proposed in a TEDX talk: “Try it… the worst thing you can lose is just 15 minutes of your life. The best thing you have to lose is that feeling of hopelessness that you will ever… reach the deepest part of yourself.”
The workshops included an exercise that had men staring at their partner’s genitals and then training, for both women and men, on the female orgasm.
The mission, Daedone said, was to make OM as mainstream as yoga.
OneTaste offered a variety of products to its members, but now faces allegations that it was also selling its staff for sex, and a Jane Doe sued and alleged it was trafficking in California, Nevada and New York. Photo courtesy of onetaste.shopify.com
He opened “OM houses,” including in Chinatown, Manhattan, offering courses that started at $195 per workshop but later reached $2,000 per week; and $16,000 to become a “certified” OM trainer.
Daedone also told her own life story to talk about OneTaste, detailing how she was raised by a single mother in Northern California during a turbulent upbringing while her estranged father was in prison after being convicted of sexually abusing two girls.
At 16 she became pregnant and had an abortion, and at 27 she learned that her father was dying of cancer in prison, Los Angeles Magazine reported.
The compelling narrative earned him followers and cash.
In 2017, OneTaste promoted coaching courses and retreats for up to $60,000 a year, and $36,000 for Daedone’s personal teaching in petting.
Daedone, seen after her arrest in June last year, has hired lawyers earning $1,000 an hour to plead her case as she protests her innocence. She is scheduled to return to Brooklyn Federal Court (right) in January of next year for her trial. AP
The company expanded to 39 cities, adding Las Vegas, Denver, Boulder, Los Angeles, Austin and London to San Francisco and New York.
But in June 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published an explosive exposé with claims from former employees and members that OneTaste management forced staff and members to have sex with each other and prospective customers to make sales.
One called it a “prostitution ring,” another “a religion.”
“The orgasm was God and Nicole was like Jesus.”
It revealed that in 2015 OneTaste paid $325,000 in an out-of-court settlement to a former employee, Ayries Blanck, who claimed that OneTaste subjected her to a “hostile work environment, sexual harassment, failure to pay minimum wage, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.” . .”
Months after the Bloomberg story, with the FBI investigating the company, Cherwitz resigned, OneTaste closed its doors, and a Netflix documentary followed in 2022, then his arrests in 2023.
Daedone’s carefully crafted rise included talking about his own troubled childhood. But her company secretly paid a six-figure settlement to a member of her staff who accused her of running a sexual harassment regime. In 2018, an explosive report led the CEO to resign and the company to close its centers. Victoria Will/New York Post
And last year, a Jane Doe from Michigan filed a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan making more surprising allegations.
The anonymous audio and video specialist said she lived and worked with other OneTaste members between 2008 and 2014 in San Francisco and in a condominium in Harlem where OneTaste allegedly hid its exploited workers.
In the case, he states that Daedone’s position on the rape was: “Deflect the rape by going 100% because then there is nothing to rape.”
OneTaste, Daedone and Cherowitz have not responded to the case and Jane Doe has asked the judge to issue them a subpoena.
Jane Doe claims that OneTaste used a condo in this Harlem building on W118th Street to hide workers it had effectively turned into sex slaves. OneTaste, Daedone and Cherowitz have not responded to the federal lawsuit.
Dr. Steven Hassan, a mental health counselor who specializes in cults and new religious movements and has worked with former OneTaste members, told The Post: “There are many cults that use sexuality to recruit and indoctrinate people.”
“As a general red flag, any group that talks about engaging in sexual activity with strangers should be questionable.
Daedone and his former CEO remain free pending trial (the founder lives in Philo, California, in a 160-acre “monastery”) and plan to vigorously defend their beliefs and practices.
A former employee told BBC journalist Nastaran Tavakoli-Far on the 2020 podcast The Orgasm Cult: “Nicole was training us to see the world as she sees it. In her eyes, there is no difference between pleasure and pain; There is no good or evil.
“It’s all just orgasm.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn