The government is being accused of “criminalizing sex” by prosecuting the two leaders of embattled “sexual wellness” empire OneTaste, according to their lawyers, who claim that they are seeking to put people in prison for fun. The company’s head of sales Rachel Cherwitz and founder Nicole Daedone are set to go to trial in January 2025 on charges that they operated OneTaste like a cult by grooming members into having sex with investors and clients, while driving the members into debt. Both women face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
The pair were in court Wednesday for a hearing in which their lawyers argued that the case should be thrown out due to alleged “misconduct” by the feds, including an FBI agent allegedly ordering a key witness to delete her email account. However, prosecutors called the defense’s claims “baseless” and “speculative”, stating that the agent was merely trying to protect the witness from harassment she had received from other OneTaste members, rather than destroy evidence.
Daedone and Cherwitz were accompanied in court by around a dozen followers of their California-based company, which is currently offering its orgasm meditation classes out of a Harlem office. The “orgasmic meditation” treatment, in which a group of women have their genitals stroked methodically for 15 minutes, promises to heal maladies ranging from sexual dysfunction and trauma to depression and anxiety.
Lawyers for Daedone and Cherwitz argued that the feds had charged the women using an unconventional interpretation of the “conspiracy to commit forced labor” law. They claimed that this was the Eastern District of New York trying to be creative in order to put someone in prison for fun, rather than adhering to legal precedents.
The company has seen a significant decline since 2018 when it attracted more than 35,000 attendees to its in-person events and was endorsed by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop website. In 2022, a Netflix documentary called “Orgasm Inc” detailed some of the allegations that form part of the current criminal case against OneTaste.
