A pair of former executives at OneTaste, the sexual wellness company that’s been described as an “orgasm cult,” was hit with a stunning federal indictment Tuesday accusing them of running a toxic community in which members were forced into sex and manipulated to the point they relied on OneTaste for even their most basic needs.
The charges are a culmination of damning accusations that’ve been levied against the duo for years, some of which were exposed in the 2022 Netflix documentary Orgasm inc: The story of OneTaste.
In a statement, the DOJ said Nicole Daedone, OneTaste’s founder, and Rachel Cherwitz, its former head of sales, subjected employees, contractors and customers to “economic, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse.”
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While the feds didn’t explicitly call Daedone and Cherwitz cult leaders, they alleged the duo practiced “surveillance, indoctrination, and intimidation” to “manipulate” and maintain control over their pupils while limiting their outside contact.
“Under the guise of empowerment and wellness, the defendants are alleged to have sought complete control over their employees’ lives, including by driving them into debt and directing them to perform sexual acts while also withholding wages,” Breon Peace, U.S. District Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
OneTaste was founded by Daedone in 2004 as a sexuality-focused wellness company that marketed itself as being experts in “orgasmic meditation.” The company told people their sexual trauma and dysfunction could be healed—but only after they forked over thousands of dollars.
OneTaste’s business model was to charge for courses that taught sexual wellness, with its premier teachings being about the transcendental benefits of extended clitoral stimulation.
After paying a pricey fee, students would live—and have sex—in monitored warehouses. The feds say the company operated around San Francisco and New York, as well as in Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Austin, London, and Boulder, Colorado.
Prosecutors allege OneTaste “targeted” individuals who’d gone through trauma. Their classes would sometimes cost tens of thousands of dollars, but they’d allow students to incur debt with them. To make sure they were compensated, Cherwitz and Daedone coerced clients to open new credit cards, or forced them to work to pay their way, the feds say.
“The defendants advertised their company as being able to help individuals recover from past trauma,” said Michael J. Driscoll, the assistant director of the FBI’s New York office. “In reality, they allegedly targeted their victims in order to manipulate them not only into debt but to limit their independence and create a reliance on OneTaste for basic needs.”
According to a series of disturbing allegations laid out in an indictment, Cherwitz and Daedone surveilled pupils in communal homes, ordering them to have sex for “freedom and enlightenment.” It also said the duo failed to pay promised wages to employees.
Cherwitz and Daedone are also accused of prying “deeply sensitive” personal information out of clients, which they’d use to render them “emotionally, socially and psychologically dependent on OneTaste.”
Once indoctrinated, the feds say Cherwitz ensured members showed “absolute commitment to Daedone” and her philosophies. That allegedly included members being forced to conduct sexual acts they found “uncomfortable or repulsive.”
In the Netflix documentary, former members said they were lured to join OneTaste after they were promised community and transcendence through extended clitoral manipulation. They said things took a turn after Daedone began charging exorbitant seminar fees and allowed female staffers to offer their bodies during “demonstrations” to new customers.
A portion of a federal indictment for Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz.
Department of JusticeThe forced sex allegedly extended outside the members themselves. Cherwitz and Daedone forced members to have sex with “current and prospective investors, clients, employees and beneficiaries” for the financial gain of OneTaste—with severe consequences if they didn’t comply, the feds said.
“Resistance to Cherwitz’s and Daedone’s directives was not tolerated, and would often result in public shame, humiliation and workplace retaliation,” prosecutors wrote in a detention memo for Cherwitz.
Cherwitz, 43, and Daedone, 56, left the company in 2018. OneTaste CEO Anjuli Ayer called the federal charges “completely unjustified” in a statement to The Daily Beast on Tuesday. Ayer claimed the indictment was fallout from an “error-riddled” Bloomberg Businessweek article in 2018 that alleged “since-debunked accusations of harm and wrongdoing.”
“We are appalled by this long-term, misogynistic, media-driven campaign to tear down a feminine empowerment project and the women who devoted their lives to it,” Ayer said.
Cherwitz was taken into custody Tuesday morning and is slated to appear in a San Francisco federal court on Wednesday. Daedone is believed to be out of the country and remains at large, the DOJ said. They face a possible prison sentence up to 20 years if convicted.
