At around three in the afternoon on June 9th, in a courtroom on the fourth floor of Brooklyn’s federal courthouse, in Brooklyn Heights, a jury passed a note to the court officer, indicating that, after two days of deliberation, it had reached a verdict in the case of Nicole Daedone, the founder of a sexual-wellness company called OneTaste, and Rachel Cherwitz, its former head of sales. Both women had been charged with one count of forced-labor conspiracy, and both had pleaded not guilty. Daedone, tanned and blond, in a slate-blue pants suit, had smiled politely as the jury filed back into the courtroom. Her defense attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, who famously has a tattoo on her right biceps with the words “Not Guilty” spelled out in block lettering, sat next to her in a puff-sleeve black blazer. In 2021, she successfully overturned Bill Cosby’s sexual-assault conviction.
OneTaste, which Daedone launched with a partner in 2004, specialized in “orgasmic meditation,” a ritual focussed on the female orgasm, in which a woman, naked from the waist down, would have the upper-left quadrant of her clitoris stroked gently by a partner—often male, usually gloved—for fifteen minutes. Daedone has said the name was derived from a Buddhist expression, which she paraphrased as “Just as the ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so does the taste of liberation, the taste of truth.” Her larger goal was to awaken the world to what she often described as “the feminine power.” The company sold demonstrations, workshops, and retreats; at its height, in 2017, it reported at least ten million dollars in annual revenue. The idea was that one could practice orgasmic meditation—or OMing, as it was also called—as often, or as little, as one liked.
Introductory classes were inexpensive, but other meetups and courses, such as the Nicole Daedone Intensive, could cost as much as thirty-six thousand dollars; an annual membership, which guaranteed a front-row seat to any OneTaste course, went for sixty thousand. The organization relied on a passionate sales team, whose reps were expected to upsell anyone who attended an introductory gathering and to embrace the OneTaste way of life—Daedone was fond of the company slogan, “Powered by Orgasm.” Staff and members often lived in one of the company’s communal houses. Employees of OneTaste were young and attractive, versions of people a potential customer might desire—or even want to be.
The attorneys for the Eastern District of New York made the case that Daedone and Cherwitz had preyed on more than a half-dozen young, impressionable women—some recovering from sexual trauma, others seduced by the idea of sexual freedom—who had worked for OneTaste for little or no money, sometimes even taking on debt, and had been pressured into engaging in sexual acts with high-spending members and, in several cases, a company funder. “This case is about a group of women who gave everything to these defendants,” Nina Gupta, a prosecutor, said during her closing argument. “Their money, their time, their bodies, their dignity, and, ultimately, their sanity.”
Daedone and Cherwitz both chose not to testify. Throughout the five-week trial, Daedone, often wrapped in a beige shawl, would turn back to look at her partner, Emmett Farley, a writer and meditation guide, who sat in the gallery with a strand of Buddhist mala beads in his hand. These were to “change the energy in the room,” he told me, his shoulder-length brown hair tied in a bun. Daedone, using the hashtags #ErosOnTrial, #EroticJustice, #liberation, and #womenspower, frequently posted on Instagram, showing pictures and slow-motion videos of herself and Cherwitz, often flanked by female OneTaste supporters, striding into the courthouse. One post was accompanied by the Fugees’ “Zealots.”
Prosecutors did not argue that Daedone or Cherwitz had threatened the nine victims with regular violence, loss of property, or blackmail, which the charge of forced-labor conspiracy often entails. Instead, witnesses testified that they had been afraid to speak up about the abuse, for fear of being ostracized or let go. Many said that they left OneTaste in debt, after being compelled to pay for expensive courses and programs while earning next to nothing. Some called OneTaste a cult. Under cross-examination, all of the victims agreed that they had technically been free to leave OneTaste at any point, but had not.
When it was time to read the verdict, the courtroom deputy, Andrew D’Agostino, stood up, a slip of paper from the jury in his hand. Daedone took a deep breath. “As to forced-labor conspiracy, how do you find the defendant Nicole Daedone—guilty or not guilty?” he asked. “We find her guilty,” the foreperson replied. (The jury had delivered the same verdict for Cherwitz.) Daedone briefly looked stricken, but, even so, a placid smile remained on her face. Judge Diane Gujarati announced a short recess. Daedone walked to the back of the courtroom, where she gave Farley a long hug. Surrounded by her supporters, some of whom were crying, she whispered, “Nothing changes.”
OneTaste opened its doors in San Francisco in the early two-thousands, as wellness culture was infiltrating the mainstream. What were once the funky habits of the counterculture movement—green juices, acupunctures, psychedelics—became a profit-driven multibillion-dollar industry, in which anxieties about beauty, fitness, sexuality, and diet all flew under the banner of wellness. Silicon Valley had just made a generation of Bay Area entrepreneurs (mostly men) very wealthy, and with their ascent came a utopian notion of self-improvement and optimization that would, the belief went, change the world. Meg Whitman was the C.E.O. and president of eBay, and a nineteen-year-old Mark Zuckerberg had built a website called Facemash, which allowed users to rank their Harvard classmates by their attractiveness. Women were both empowered and objectified, deemed capable of being in charge but still overtly sexualized. OneTaste, by centering women’s pleasure, possessed a sheen of radicalism at a moment when feminism and misogyny seemed to go hand in hand.
The idea for OneTaste took root in 1998, after Daedone met a sexuality coach named Erwan Davon at a party. In her retellings, Daedone has described Davon as a Buddhist monk. (Davon has said he’s spent time living in a Zen monastery.) That night, he offered to stroke her clitoris. He examined her vagina under a light, and began to narrate its colors and shape: coral, rose, pearl pink. Daedone wept. In a TEDxSF talk, from 2011, she describes what happened next: “And then, all of a sudden, the traffic jam that was my mind broke open, and it was like I was on the open road and there was not a thought in sight. And there was only pure feeling, and for the first time in my life I felt like I had access to that hunger that was underneath all of my other hungers, which is a fundamental hunger to connect with another human being.”
The practice, which was called “deliberate orgasm,” originated with Morehouse, a commune—founded in 1968 in Oakland, California—whose goal was to live pleasurably among friends. It was inspired by the life-style and teachings of Victor Baranco, who, in 1971, described himself in Rolling Stone as a former used-car salesman and a “peddler of phony jewelry.” Baranco once held a three-hour demonstration of a deliberate orgasm (including cigarette breaks) with a twenty-two-year-old Morehouse resident named Diana. “Sometimes he would have me recite nursery rhymes,” she noted on the group’s website, explaining how she kept her focus. Morehouse’s participants were known among locals for painting their houses purple and driving purple limousines. The group, under the philosophy of “responsible hedonism,” opened More University in 1977, offering classes such as “Basic Sensuality” and “Basic Hexing.” (The Times described the school as “worthless,” with “no campus and no library,” and, in 1997, a change in state law led the university to close its doors.)
Daedone was so gripped by the idea of deliberate orgasm that she ended up joining the Welcomed Consensus, a small commune founded in Northern California by a Vietnam veteran and hairdresser named R. J. Testerman, who had begun replicating Baranco’s pedagogy after taking classes at More University. Davon, whom Daedone was now dating on and off, was also involved. (Both organizations have been called cults, and one trial witness testified that Testerman, who has passed away, was physically abusive to many of those who lived with him. Morehouse disputes the label “cult.” Welcomed Consensus, which is retired, declined to comment on any allegations but called Testerman a “well-respected” community member.) Daedone—then known as Nikki—spent a few years with the Welcomed Consensus, eventually moving in with the group in 2000. She contributed to its online forum, the Clit Board, but she had bigger ambitions. She moved into a more relaxed communal household in Brisbane, south of San Francisco. In 2002, she travelled to Hawaii, where she met Baranco, who was dying of cancer. She appealed to be his successor. Baranco agreed, but the plan fizzled out—after just a few weeks, she returned to California empty-handed.
Daedone was convinced that clitoral stroking could one day be as popular as yoga. She made a few tweaks to the practice, imposing a fifteen-minute timer for sessions and changing the name to orgasmic meditation to give it more of a mindfulness sensibility. That same year, she founded the first of several ventures with Rob Kandell, a computer programmer she had met through the Welcomed Consensus who had become disillusioned with his life and would soon divorce his wife. Two years later, using the proceeds from the sale of Kandell’s San Francisco house—three hundred and fifty thousand dollars—they launched OneTaste, which would roll feminism, wellness, and the free-love movement of the sixties into one.
Daedone and Kandell rented their first space in San Francisco, on Folsom Street, and began offering OM workshops, yoga, and other classes. Over the next few years, they rented multiple homes in the city, where staff lived and worked together. The Welcomed Consensus served as a partial blueprint. For devoted OneTasters in the early years, communal living was intended to break down people’s barriers and push past what was uncomfortable or ordinary, in order to reach a more raw version of the self. Daedone assigned certain people to be “research partners”; they were instructed to explore each other, both emotionally and sexually. People often slept two to a bed. Days always began and typically ended with OM sessions; household chores and administrative work were taken care of in between. Senior staff taught various classes on clitoral stroking, oral sex, bondage, and more. If there was conflict between two people, it wasn’t unusual to recommend a “makeout,” a euphemism for sexual activity, which was believed to smooth out unspoken tension. The organization dabbled in B.D.S.M. Daedone had used drugs when she was younger, and A.A. and N.A. meetings were a part of the company culture. Although Daedone had dated women in the past, OneTaste was more heteronormative than not. Still, the place offered a sense of possibility. Some people there believed that they were deprogramming themselves, living in an uninhibited way that society would never otherwise have allowed.
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