Nicole Daedone’s Orgasmic Meditation Workshops Promised Religious Progress—Staff Referred to as it a Cult

“Would you want some tea?” Nicole Daedone requested a reporter on June 1 after introducing two staff on the Harlem places of work of the Institute of OM, previously OneTaste, the corporate she cofounded in San Francisco in 2004.

She motioned towards a desk set with plates of macaroons, nuts and dried fruit and sat down for a dialogue of orgasmic meditation, OM for brief, the 15-minute sexual stimulation follow that Daedone, 57, was a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

OM represents the unconventional thought that girls’s our bodies maintain knowledge, not disgrace,” she mentioned, “and that we are able to prepare our consideration by pleasure.”

The follow claims to unlock a lady’s full non secular and bodily potential and even heal previous sexual trauma. Daedone mentioned she has taught OM to tens of thousands of people over time whereas rising a neighborhood of devoted followers, a few of whom considered her as their non secular chief.

“I made a decision from the start I used to be going to run this firm as a lady, and it will be designed in a female method so I didn’t must separate my life and my follow from my work,” she mentioned. “That’s why we now have the neighborhood—I designed it like that.”

What Daedone described as a collaborative neighborhood, nevertheless, was a enterprise that some former staff have likened to a cult.

In April 2023 Daedone—who offered her stake in OneTaste for $12 million in 2017 however stays a guide for the rebranded firm—and former head of gross sales Rachel Cherwitz, 44, have been indicted on a federal cost of pressured labor conspiracy by america Legal professional’s Workplace for the Jap District of New York.

“Underneath the guise of empowerment and wellness, the defendants are alleged to have sought full management over their staff’ lives, together with by driving them into debt and directing them to carry out sexual acts whereas additionally withholding wages,” mentioned U.S. Legal professional Breon Peace. 

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Prosecutors argued that Daedone recruited employees by promising to heal their trauma with her teachings after which made them depending on her and OneTaste for fundamental requirements akin to meals and shelter, remoted them from family and friends and in some circumstances instructed them to have interaction in sexual exercise with people regardless of their objections or resistance.

As well as ex-employees have accused Daedone and Cherwitz in civil lawsuits of intercourse trafficking and forcing them to do OM with potential buyers. 

Daedone and Cherwitz have denied legal responsibility within the civil fits and pleaded not responsible to the prison expenses. However after a five-week trial, a Brooklyn jury on June 9 found them guilty of forced labor conspiracy.

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“The defendants constructed a enterprise on the backs of a choose group of ladies who they focused, abused and exploited,” prosecutor Nina Gupta advised jurors in her closing assertion. “They claimed they might free them.”

As Daedone advised it, her enterprise started with a cheerful coincidence.

Born in California and raised by a single mom, Daedone graduated from San Francisco State College with a level in semantics and gender communications and was finding out to grow to be a Buddhist nun when she met a fellow visitor at a celebration who advised her about OM.

She mentioned she spent years finding out the follow earlier than launching OneTaste on a shoestring funds.

“We had individuals sleeping on couches, working for ardour relatively than maximizing paychecks, as a result of they believed within the imaginative and prescient,” she recalled. “It was Silicon Valley power utilized to human consciousness. The mixture was electrical.”

The beginning-up was a monetary success, providing OM workshops and retreats that price as a lot as $60,000 per particular person. However some former staff say they have been exploited for revenue.

“I used to be actually, actually lonely. I actually wished neighborhood, and OneTaste provided that in such a transparent method,” an ex-sales crew member, who glided by the identify Becky Uma at work, testified in federal court docket on Might 7. However she mentioned her month-to-month wage barely lined the price of the communal house with a shared mattress she rented from the corporate and the OM programs she was anticipated to take. 

Becky advised jurors she lived in a state of fixed surveillance from friends and higher-ups and endured verbal and sexual abuse from Cherwitz.

“It was the expectation that I might be open to OMing with anyone off the road,” Becky testified.

Legal professionals for Daedone and Cherwitz argued that Becky, who was finally terminated by her bosses at her personal request with the intention to obtain unemployment advantages, might have left her job or moved out of firm housing at any time. 

Every going through as much as 20 years in jail, Daedone and Cherwitz plan to attraction the case.

“This was not justice—it was the criminalization of remorse and a retroactive rewriting of consensual experiences,” Daedone mentioned. “The federal government turned ideology into prosecution, concentrating on feminine sexuality and freedom of expression.”

U.S. Legal professional Joseph Nocella Jr. had a distinct take: “The jury’s verdict has unmasked Daedone and Cherwitz for who they really are: grifters who preyed on weak victims by making empty guarantees of sexual empowerment and wellness solely to control them into performing labor and companies for the defendants’ profit.”

Nocella added that he hopes “future charlatans suppose twice.”