Pleasure has a dark side — at least according to prosecutors.
The glamorous founder of the once trendy “sexual wellness” empire OneTaste, Nicole Daedone, 56, and its former CEO Rachel Cherwitz, 43, are to go on trial next year, accused of running a cult which forced workers into sex and followers into debt.
The duo appeared in federal court in Brooklyn Thursday, trailed by a glam-squad entourage and represented by $1,000-an-hour attorneys, to be told their criminal trial on charges of running a forced labor conspiracy will take place in 2025 and is likely to take a month.
They could face years in prison if found guilty of the charges, and are also being sued in federal court in Manhattan by a former worker who accuses them of trafficking her for sex to gain OneTaste customers.
It is a precipitous fall for Daedone, who was once given a place on the TedX Talks stage for a breathless 15-minute talk about “the female orgasm” and hung out with Gwyneth Paltrow.
Paltrow’s Goop website talked up OneTaste, which was also endorsed by Khloe Kardashian — and raked in $12 million a year, according to court documents.
Under the guise of “sexual wellness,” OneTaste built an empire capitalizing on the female orgasm through its “orgasmic meditation” (“OM”).
Daedone trademarked the technique, which involved a woman undressing from the waist down then lying on a “nest of pillows” to have her genitals stroked, usually by a man wearing a a latex glove for precisely 15 minutes. Daedone claimed she learned it from a Buddhist monk.
But allegations of rape, sexual abuse and manipulation sparked an FBI investigation which began in November 2018 and led to their arrest in June 2023.
Now prosecutors charge that Daedone and Cherwitz preyed on vulnerable consumers by marketing its company as helping to heal sexual trauma — then forced members into debt to pay for its courses.
And it is accused of withholding pay from employees and subjecting them to “economic, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse, surveillance, indoctrination and intimidation.”
Since the FBI’s probe began, OneTaste and the women have spent $15 million on legal fees, and have sued Netflix, the BBC and a former member.
Their attorneys from white shoe firms Alston & Bird and Steptoe filed a motion to dismiss the case in January on which Diane Gujarati is still to rule.
OneTaste was founded in 2004 in San Francisco by Daedone, offering hands-on “OM” classes as “a way to make orgasm, connection and sensuality sustainable.”
She boasted that “OM” was “beyond tantra: sexuality in the post new age,” and offered hands-on orgasm “training” courses for thousands of dollars.
By 2011, Daedone pitched in a TEDX talk: “Just try it… the worst thing you have to lose is just 15 minutes of your life. The best thing you have to lose is that sense of hopelessness that you will ever… be reached deep inside.”
Workshops featured an exercise making men stare at their partner’s genitals, then training, for both women and men, in female orgasm.
The mission, Daedone said, was to make OM as mainstream as yoga.
She opened “OM houses,” including in Chinatown, Manhattan, offering courses which started at $195 for a workshop but then went to $2,000 per week; and $16,000 to become a “certified” OM coach.
Daedone also told her own life story to talk up 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 molesting two young girls.
At 16, she got pregnant and had an abortion, and by 27, she learned her father was dying of cancer in prison, Los Angeles Magazine reported.
The compelling narrative won her followers and cash. By 2017 OneTaste was promoting coaching courses and retreats for up to $60,000 per year, and $36,000 for Daedone’s personal teaching in stroking.
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 bombshell expose with claims from former staff and members that OneTaste’s management made staff and members to have sex with each other and prospective customers to make sales. One called it a “prostitution ring,” another “a religion.”
“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 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 stepped down, OneTaste closed its doors, and a Netflix documentary followed in 2022, then their arrests in 2023.
And last year, a Jane Doe from Michigan sued in federal court in Manhattan making more jaw-dropping allegations.
The unnamed audio-video specialist said she lived and worked with other OneTaste members between 2008 and 2014 in San Francisco and at a Harlem condo where OneTaste allegedly stashed its exploited workers.
In the case she claims Daedone’s position on rape was: “Deflect the rape by turning on 100% because then there is nothing to rape.”
OneTaste, Daedone and Cherowitz have not responded to the case and the Jane Doe has asked the judge to issue a summons to them.
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’s talking about having sexual activity with strangers needs to be questionable.
Daedone and her former CEO remain free pending their trial — the founder is living in Philo, California, on a 160-acre “monastery” — and plan to vigorously defend their beliefs and practices.
One former staffer told BBC journalist Nastaran Tavakoli-Far in the 2020 podcast The Orgasm Cult: “Nicole was training us to see the world the way she does. In her eyes, there’s no difference between pleasure and pain; there’s no such thing as good and no such thing as evil.
“It’s all just orgasm.”