Witness recounts sex abuse, public humiliation at NYC ‘cult’ branch
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BROOKLYN (CN) — Becky was 23 years old and living in San Francisco when she met someone on the dating site OKCupid whose profile mentioned something called “orgasmic meditation.”
Intrigued, she agreed to a date and soon learned the term refers not to the solitary, ancient practice that is meditation, but to a partnered activity involving stroking a woman’s genitals for 15 minutes. Its creator, Nicole Daedone, touts “OM,” as she calls it, as a method of sexual liberation and fostering connection.
This was the signature practice of OneTaste, the Bay Area-based company founded by Daedone, now 57 and facing a criminal trial in Brooklyn alongside her former head of sales, 44-year-old Rachel Cherwitz. Both women face one count of forced labor conspiracy and are accused of using abusive and manipulative tactics to gain full control over employees who did menial and sexual labor for little to no pay. If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Attorneys for Daedone and Cherwitz argued in openings Tuesday that sexual relations at OneTaste were always between consenting adults, and the door to leave remained open.
Taking the stand on Wednesday morning as the government’s first witness, Becky, whose full name Courthouse News is withholding given the nature of her testimony, told a story that embodies the government’s allegations. Over a period of several years, as she fell deeper into OneTaste, she said she lost her sense of reality, went into thousands of dollars in debt and underwent daily verbal abuse that escalated to unwanted sexual touching by Cherwitz, her boss.
“OneTaste, to me, is a cult,” Becky said Wednesday (though U.S. District Judge Diane Gujarati struck the comment from the record).
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