Fun has a dark side — at least according to prosecutors.
The glamorous founders of the OneTaste “sexual wellness” empire, Nicole Daedone, 56, and her former CEO Rachel Cherwitz, 43, will go on trial next year, accused of running a cult that forced employees to have sex and owed followers .
The two appeared in federal court in Brooklyn Thursday, followed by a glam-squad entourage and represented by $1,000-an-hour lawyers, to be told their criminal trial on charges of running a forced labor conspiracy will take place in 2025 and is likely to last a month.
They could face years in prison if convicted of the charges, and are also being sued in federal court in Manhattan by former employees who accuse them of trafficking them for sex to get OneTaste customers.
It’s a notable 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 hanging out with Gwyneth Paltrow.
Paltrow’s Goop website discusses OneTaste, which is also endorsed by Khloe Kardashian – and earns $12 million a year, according to court documents.
Daedone (second right) hangs out with Paltrow (left) at a Goop health event in 2017, when OneTaste reached the height of its commercial success with its claim that 15 minutes of “orgasmic meditation” would change women’s lives. John Salangsang/BFA/Shutterstock Daedone gained YouTube views with his TedX talk on “Orgasme — the cure for hunger” in which he refuted his claims about female orgasms, boosting his OneTaste business in the process. TED
Under the guise of “sexual wellness”, OneTaste built an empire by harnessing women’s orgasms through its “orgasm meditation” (“OM”).
Daedone trademarked the technique, which involves a woman undressing from the waist down then lying on a “nest of pillows” to have her private parts stroked, usually by a man wearing latex gloves, for 15 minutes. Daedone claimed 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 their arrest in June 2023.
Now prosecutors allege Daedone and Cherwitz preyed on vulnerable consumers by marketing his company as helping recover from sexual trauma — then forcing members into debt to pay for his courses.
OneTaste charges thousands for followers to learn its techniques. Men are taught how to stare at a woman’s genitals and then caress her for exactly 15 minutes while women are taught how to be caressed. Courtesy of Netflix
And it is accused of withholding wages from workers and subjecting them to “economic, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse, surveillance, indoctrination and intimidation.”
Since the FBI investigation began, OneTaste and the woman have spent $15 million in legal fees, and have sued Netflix, the BBC and former members.
Their lawyers from the white-shoe firm Alston & Bird and Steptoe filed a motion to dismiss the case in January in which Diane Gujarati still rules.
OneTaste was founded in 2004 in San Francisco by Daedone, offering live “OM” classes as “a way to make orgasms, connections and passion sustainable.”
Daedone spread his technique across the country as OneTaste grew but prosecutors say it hid a gruesome reality: workers were exploited for their labor and forced into sex in exchange for sales. In 2009 The Post went to one of his “intimacy” classes with instructor Justin Dawson. Victoria Will/New York Post
He boasts that “OM” is “beyond tantra: sexuality in the new age,” and offers live orgasmic “training” courses for thousands of dollars.
By 2011, Daedone gave a TEDX talk: “Try it… the worst thing you have to lose is just 15 minutes of your life. The best thing you have to lose is the despair you’ll ever… reach deep inside.”
The workshop featured exercises making men stare at their partner’s genitals, then training, for women and men, in female orgasms.
The mission, Daedone says, is to make OM as mainstream as yoga.
OneTaste offers a variety of merchandise to members but now faces allegations that it also sold its staff for sex, with one Jane Doe suing and claiming she trafficked 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 for a workshop but then became $2,000 per week; and $16,000 to become a “certified” OM trainer.
Daedone also drew on his own life story to talk about OneTaste, detailing how he was raised by a single mother in Northern California during a tumultuous upbringing while his estranged father was in prison after being convicted of molesting two young girls.
At 16, she got pregnant and had an abortion, and at 27, she learned her father was dying of cancer in prison, Los Angeles Magazine reported.
That compelling narrative won him followers and cash.
By 2017 OneTaste was promoting coaching courses and retreats for up to $60,000 a year, and $36,000 for Daedone’s private lessons in stroking.
Daedone, seen after his arrest in June last year, had hired a $1,000-an-hour lawyer to fight his case as he protested his innocence. He is scheduled to return to Brooklyn Federal Court (right) in January next year for 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 a shocking expose with allegations from former staff and members that OneTaste management made staff and members have sex with each other and potential customers to make sales.
One called it a “prostitution ring,” another a “religion.”
“Orgasm is God and Nicole is 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 OneTaste had subjected her to a “hostile work environment, sexual harassment, failure to pay minimum wage and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
A few 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 their arrest in 2023.
Daedone’s carefully crafted revival includes a discussion of his own troubled childhood. But his company secretly paid a six-figure settlement to an employee who accused him of running a sexual harassment regime. In 2018, great reports caused CEOs to quit and businesses to close their centers. Victoria Will/New York Post
And last year, a Jane Doe from Michigan sued in federal court in Manhattan making even more shocking allegations.
The unnamed audio-video expert said he lived and worked with other OneTaste members between 2008 and 2014 in San Francisco and in a Harlem condo where OneTaste allegedly hid its exploited workers.
In the case he claims Daedone’s position on rape is: “Leave rape by turning on 100% because there is nothing to rape.”
OneTaste, Daedone and Cherowitz have not yet responded to the case and Jane Doe has asked a judge to issue them a subpoena.
Jane Doe alleges that OneTaste used a condo in this Harlem building on W118th Street to house workers who were effectively 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 a lot of 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 questioned.
Daedone and its former CEO remain free pending their trial — the founders live in Philo, California, in a 160-acre “monastery” — and plan to vigorously defend their beliefs and practices.
A former staff member told BBC journalist Nastaran Tavakoli-Far in The Orgasm Cult 2020 podcast: “Nicole is training us to see the world as she does. In her eyes, there is no difference between pleasure and pain; there is no good and no evil.
“It’s all just orgasms.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
