Witness recounts sex abuse, public humiliation at NYC ‘cult’ branch

Brooklyn, New York — 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).

Over the course of about four years Becky, who left OneTaste in spring of 2014, estimated that she paid as much as $20,000 for courses while making a salary of about $2,000 per month.

“I came in with very little in savings and I left with absolutely nothing,” she testified.

Once she transitioned from workshop participant to OneTaste employee, Becky would learn that behind the scenes, sales employees were tracking how easily they could sell her on pricey courses she’d then have to work off as a member of the sales team.

“I was kind of like the perfect mark,” Becky said. “I was very primed for it because I was really, really lonely and I wanted community and OneTaste offered that in such a clear way.”

In 2012, Becky, then living in New York City, took the next step into OneTaste by signing up for a $12,000 coaching session she couldn’t afford. She was put on a payment plan and began working for the company. The following year she moved into a shared apartment in Harlem known as The Morellino.

“I just sort of quit everything else I was doing,” she said. She was all in on OneTaste.

At The Morellino, privacy was scarce; employees shared beds as a way to “get as tight and tightly bonded with everyone as possible” and break down their personal boundaries. It was common for someone to walk into the bathroom during a shower if the door was unlocked.

Roommates had to send “weather reports” both giving sales updates and tipping off management to their colleagues’ behavior, whether they seemed close to or distant from the group. Any dissident behavior would get back to Cherwitz.

“I was acutely aware that I was not only being watched by [leadership] but also that I was being watched by my peers,” Becky said.

From their group “OM” session at 7 a.m. until bedtime between midnight and 1 a.m., employees had to respond immediately to a constant stream of text messages and group chats from OneTaste. They were to send notices if they’d be unavailable even briefly: “Offline, 15 minutes, shower.” “Offline, 10 minutes, bathroom.” “Offline, 20 minutes, OM circle.”

She paid around $800 per month for room and board in the shared home. Though she was still paying off her debt, she wasn’t spending much in the outside world, “so netting close to zero was still livable.”

Out in the world, employees were supposed to be representative of the company at all times.

“The expectation was to talk to anyone you see and kind of proselytize the company,” Becky said.

She was also tasked with cleaning, making beds and setting up events and booking appointments and travel for Daedone — whose designer clothing, jewelry and bags signaled a starkly more luxurious lifestyle. Daedone eventually sold OneTaste in 2017 for $12 million.

As she became more involved in the company, Becky said her standing dwindled when it came to declining requests to perform OneTaste’s flagship sex act.

“It was the expectation that I would be open to OMing with anybody off the street,” she said. In order to say no, “I had to have a really good reason.”

Eventually, she became fed up. She wanted out, but stayed in, beginning to act out of turn by OneTaste standards. She’d shut off her phone for a period of hours — a major rule violation — and at one point got out of a moving car to escape from Cherwitz berating her, she testified.

“I just remember her screaming at me so loudly and so much that I couldn’t take it anymore,” Becky said.

“I really, really lost touch with reality. I really, really was so immersed in this world. My sense of up and down and right and wrong was skewed,” she testified. “But more to the point I was just exhausted.”

At a breaking point, Becky was summoned to a group meeting where Cherwitz called her a “virus,” scolded her and directed the rest of the group not to talk to Becky or the virus would “infect” them, too.

“And they listened. Everybody stopped talking to me,” Becky said.

Shortly afterward, Becky declined to participate in a genital-rubbing demonstration — another major violation. But after some back and forth, she got up anyway and participated. Then Cherwitz took over and began “stroking” her. Becky knew she was supposed to project her enthusiasm to the room, and she tried to fake it.

“It didn’t feel good. I didn't want to be there. I had said no,” she testified.

She said the session turned into another public humiliation, with Cherwitz again laying into her, telling Becky that orgasm was “broken” and that she was “not good at this anymore.”

Becky had had enough of Cherwitz, but she testified, “I still foolishly, crazily wanted to be committed to this purpose, this mission.” She got transferred back to San Francisco instead.

More than a decade later, Becky said she’s still recovering psychologically from her experience in OneTaste.

“It’s really hard to be in the room right now, for example,” she testified with a nervous laugh, speaking to a courtroom gallery half-filled with supporters of Daedone and Cherwitz.

Direct examination will continue Thursday morning. Trial expected to last six weeks.