The defendants are Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz. The charge is forced labor conspiracy—not forced labor, but the conspiracy to make it happen. At the heart of the case is Orgasmic Meditation—OM. Through that, the government saw a conspiracy to coerce adults into sex.
There were no rape charges. No assaults. No physical restraints. Every participant was an adult. They signed forms. Paid for courses. Some maxed out credit cards. Some laid themselves bare, literally and spiritually.
The government said it was conspiracy masked as a lifestyle. Daedone and Cherwitz did not sell a path to enlightenment. They sold bondage. They told people that OM would help them and then turned help into obedience. Into unpaid labor. Into debt. Into sex. There were no whips. No locked doors. Only language.
Consent Trial
Judge Diane Gujarati set the trial for May. She will oversee the government’s meaning of consent. Can what adults said, signed, and agreed to—be unwound by the theory that it is possible to conspire to force adults into something they believe they’ve chosen.
OneTaste might have sold timeshares. They sold orgasm. That made the difference. OM is not illegal. What made it perilous was intimacy. The idea that in stripping down, people might surrender their will.
The prosecutors said OM was the gateway drug—a practice that became a hook, and a hook became a harness.
The indictment does not allege rape or that a hand was laid in violence. Only that words and teachings had too much power. Enough to make adults abandon good sense and self-interest.
The case will rest on where philosophy ends and conspiracy begins, where self-discovery crosses into spiritual surrender reclassified as unpaid work. If the government succeeds: You may choose and still be a victim. That influence—if sexual enough—can become force. And force, when spoken instead of struck, when felt instead of fought, is a felony.
Did they choose this?—might never be enough to answer Was it a crime?
By the government’s standard—when words are soft and outcomes painful—consent can be conspiracy. It is not what they were told to do. It is what they believed they were doing. And the government insists they could not have understood.
They did not kidnap. They did not imprison. They taught. But the government says: You may choose, and still be coerced. You may consent—and still be a victim.
Criminal Intimacy
OneTaste. Not a temple. Not a church. But a loft in San Francisco, warm, alive. No crucifix. Just bodies and the promise of something higher, found in release not restraint. They call it Orgasmic Meditation. Fifteen minutes. A ritual as deliberate as a chant, as intimate as prayer.
Nicole Daedone did not threaten hell. She promised healing. She said trauma lived in the nervous system. That God could be found not in denial, but in sensation. She did not say submit, as the imam might. She did not say confess, as the priest might. She said feel.
She did not promise paradise. She promised connection. A path. A method. She offered coaching, community, the chance to be seen—deeply without shame. For some, it worked. For others, it didn’t. Like any gospel. But unlike the bishop or the rabbi or the robed man on the mountaintop, she spoke of sex—not sin.
There were no cages. No shackles. The doors not locked. The students paid. They signed waivers. They nodded. They returned.
And yet: conspiracy to commit forced labor. Because the gospel she preached was strange. Because the sacrament involved touch, and touch is taboo. Because the government, unable to criminalize Orgasmic Meditation itself, chose to criminalize how it was taught.
But what is OneTaste, if not a reflection of every other institution the State dares not prosecute? The Church takes ten percent of your income and promises heaven. OneTaste asked for a weekend and promised transformation. The monk teaches discipline through deprivation. Nicole Daedone taught presence through pleasure.
The difference is not harm—but how we name it. OneTaste did not invent belief. They merely used a different vocabulary.
And for that, they now face twenty years.
